The job description didn't say you can't be stunned

Elections Newfoundland and Labrador is "A Non-Partisan Office Responsible for the Conduct of Provincial Elections and Plebiscites."

The qualifications are impartiality, not intelligence or competence. Which is good. Because the incumbent in the office of Chief Electoral Officer, well... res ipsa loquitur. From yesterday's Telegram:

Voting window could widen to accommodate Alberta exodus
Rob Antle
The Telegram
November 28, 2006, p. A1

The province may be losing its workers, but it's hoping not to lose their votes.

Elections officials are proposing changes that would allow voters to cast their ballots nearly two months in advance of the 2007 provincial election, to accommodate Newfoundlanders working out west.

"The idea is to try to make it as flexible and as open and as transparent (as possible), and to give everybody the full opportunity and the fair opportunity to cast their ballots," chief electoral officer Chuck Furey told The Telegram.

Furey said his proposal would allow voters to cast those special ballots up to four weeks before the writ is officially dropped.

It is not clear how the CEO plans to have people vote, not just before the writ is dropped, which means before there are, for electoral law purposes, any candidates to vote for, but, in many cases, even before there are even candidates under the challenging parties' internal nomination rules.

How can you vote without knowing who to vote for (or against)?

Between this, and Chuck's injection of himself into the highly-political Marine Atlantic issue, and Roger Grimes, one of three partisan appointees to the Electoral Boundaries Commission, inserting himself back into politics on the airwaves (VOCM, October 5, 18, 21 and 23) and in the pages of The Telegram last month ("A goose egg for the Premier", October 28), surely someone will make it a point to reform, once and for all, how these important, and supposedly impartial jobs are filled in the future.