Electoral-Management-Reference-Model-v.1.0

2.2.1 Scale
General elections are enormous undertakings. A few statistics from a recent provincial election
in B.C. illustrate this point:
• maps and information materials were created to place an estimated 2,000,000 physical
addresses into the correct electoral district.
• an estimated 1,500 general polling places, 200 advance locations and 90 election field
offices were rented and arranged to receive electors.
• 80 tons of election materials were shipped throughout the province, including the most
remote regions of the province.
• 38,000 temporary staff and election officials were recruited and trained.
There are many businesses that operate at a large scale. What is unique about the business of
elections is the extent to which electoral agencies must expand and contract their operations over
the course of a business cycle. When it is time to deliver an event, it is not uncommon for
electoral agencies to increase their labour force by a factor of over 700 times and to exceed the
employment of the jurisdiction’s entire public service on Voting Day. This expansion and
contraction means that parallel business processes must be developed to deal with what, on the
surface, appears the same function. For instance, the business process required to pay permanent
staff on an on-going basis may be different from the process required to pay the veritable army
of temporary workers and election officials who are employed by the agency for a short period of
time.
The business of elections is also unique in terms of its geographic scale. Voting must be
accessible and, therefore, voting opportunities are made available throughout the jurisdiction.
Most Canadian jurisdictions consist of a mixture of highly urbanized and very remote regions.
Electoral agencies overcome accessibility and infrastructure issues to ensure that access to voting
opportunities is relatively even across the jurisdiction.
2.2.2 Business cycle
The expansion and contraction of activity that characterizes the business of elections is driven by
the business cycle. The business cycle of an electoral agency is usually approximately four years
in duration and can be roughly divided into four phases, as defined below:
1) Pre-event – the phase leading up to a general election when enumerations or targeted
revisions are conducted, boundary redistributions are concluded, computer systems changes
are finalized and tested, forms and manuals are finalized, printed and packed with election
supplies for shipping, Returning Officers are trained, and communications campaigns to
raise awareness about the election and enumeration get underway.
2) Event – the event phase is defined by legislation and begins when the writs of election are
issued and ends when they are returned. The length of the event phase varies across
jurisdictions (e.g., 50 days in B.C., 36 days at the federal level). This is the phase of most
intense activity in the business cycle.
3) Post-event – following the return of the writs of election, effort levels remain relatively high
as election materials are returned from field offices and audited, disposed of, or stored,
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April 9, 2010