Open government at work

The Elections Act provides:

214. The Chief Electoral Officer shall publish within 9 months after each general election and each by-election a book containing pertinent statistics of the election, including poll-by-poll results of each electoral district.

The general election was on October 11, 2011. This statutory, mandatory, deadline expired yesterday. And, notwithstanding a curious addition to the Tabled Documents section of the House of Assembly website late on Wednesday, there is no sign that the "book" has actually been "published".

As of today, it's been 275 days since the provincial general election.

Yes, we've seen this film before.

By way of comparison, this chart shows the elapse of time between the most recent general election in each Canadian jurisdiction (except Nunavut), and the publication of the detailed poll-by-poll results.

The date of "publication" is the earlier of (a) the date on which provisional poll-by-poll results were released by the relevant electoral authority, or (b) the date on the transmittal letter of the official report. Nunavut is excepted because there does not seem to be a date on its final report.

The three Prairie provinces have taken to publishing provisional poll-by-poll results as early as election night, and in the subsequent days; their figures have accordingly been arbitrarily set at seven days for the purpose of this graph.

Electoral officials in the five provinces immediately to the west of Newfoundland and Labrador took an average of 90 days to publish poll-by-poll results of their most recent general elections. All but Prince Edward Island have larger voter populations and more polling divisions than Newfoundland and Labrador.

Ontario, the most populous province, took only a month and a half.

The final 2011 federal election results were published just 107 days after polls closed.