14 Oct Dear Elections NS: Where are the poll-by-poll results?

The election took place a week ago, but Elections Nova Scotia has still not published the poll-by-poll results from each riding. This, despite a notice on the agency’s website (see right) promising to post them by last Friday.

In past elections, newspapers carried the poll-by-poll results two days after the vote, if not the very next day.

These were understood to be unofficial results. Minor adjustments inevitably followed before the final, official results were published in a booklet. But the preliminary totals have always been public information.

Elections Nova Scotia obviously has the numbers. Why is it withholding them?

I suspect we will hear some song and dance about waiting until they deem the results “final” or “official,” as if the nabobs of Elections Nova Scotia possess some special wisdom and maturity to handle preliminary data that would send ordinary Nova Scotians into paroxysms of… well, of what, exactly?

This attitude would be of a piece with the creeping authoritarianism that seems to have overtaken Elections Nova Scotia—illustrated by the kneecapping of its political donations reports  (a misstep it partially relented on this summer), and the bully boy hissy fit it threw in response to a small handful of ballot snapshots.