Chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand says Canada's outdated voting process has reached a tipping point and must be modernized to meet the needs and expectations of voters.

Mayrand says the Canada Elections Act is based on the way elections were conducted in the 19th century, when communication with the regions was limited, oversight was minimal and election administration was local.

As a result, he says the process is entirely manual, rigid and slow.

In last fall's election, he says the cumbersome procedures resulted in long lineups at advance polls.

Mayrand is recommending a number of reforms to bring the process into the 21st century.

For instance, he says voter information cards should include bar codes that can be electronically checked as soon as voters show up at polling stations, rather than forcing voters to wait in line for a poll worker at a specific table to strike their name off a paper list.

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I thought the important part was suggesting we do something like New Zealand did, with either a 75% Parliament approval or referendum. I would like PR but the Conservatives may block it.

Marc Meyrand can only comment on the mechanics of voting. The whole electoral system needs changing, to one in which each voter has the same legislative power through an MP who the voter voted for; and, each MP must represent the same number of voters.

To accomplish this one needs multi-member electoral districts since one MP can not represent all the voters in a district. Such districts would, for example be five times the size of existing districts, and five MPs would be elected in such a district.

The voter would be given a ballot with a list of names on it, perhaps 25 names, and asked to rank them 1, 2, 3 .. etc as many as the voter wishes. The counting system is designed to achieve the objective; the best known method doing this is STV. This was the recommendation of the BC Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform in 2004. In May 2005, 58 % of BC voters voted for it. The BC government should have put it in place. Why did it not do so? It was a matter of self interest - half of those MLAs would not have got elected under STV.