Alberta 2019 Provincial Election

[04Terminator]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

I will wander in occasionally. I would also like to point out that I never ever said there wasn't waste. There absolutely is.

However, I find it amusing when people just assume they can reduce the budge of AHS by 20% by finding management efficiencies. AHS spends 3.6% on administration. Translate that into staff, and there is 3.3% of the workforce are management. That's a management ratio of 1 manager to 30 staff. So, of the 102000 actual AHS employees, that's roughly 3200 managers. Since AHS has a budget of $14.7B. (not 21B like the news like to report), that 20% would account for $2.9B. If you think that shitcanning 3.3% of the staff will save you almost $3B, then you're just stupid.

So, since about 55% of the budget is nurses... who ARE unionized, there's fuck all you can do. The PC gov'ts signed those union agreements that allow the waste to happen, and nobody has the power or the will to change it. If you think you can go and cut out Nurses.. then go for it. When they strike en masse and people start to die then well.. too bad I guess? When you add in what AHS pays to Covenant (on top of what GoA pays them directly) and doctors. That increases to 70% of the budget.

But wait, there's more. AHS manages roughly 780 health related locations around the province. But remember Covenant Health? A Catholic Health Entity that is *sort of* separate? They have an annual budge of almost a billion dollars, and they manage 17 facilities with 11,000 employees. The best part? AHS has to provide services for those facilities like IT, laundry, staff, EMS.. all the standard services. They're run by Patrick Dumelie. The public sectors highest paid CEO. (over $800k in his best year). Dozens of nurses in Covenant are paid higher than the highest paid staff in AHS.. but it's a *private corporation* so there's no accountability.

Coles notes... I never said there wasn't waste. I generally said something along the lines of, good luck trying to stop it. The waste is written into contracts that were signed by the PCs and enforced by the Unions..

Full Disclosure.. I'm not a union position. I fall into the 3.6%, as does a reasonable chunk of IT being professionals. That's the chunk that hasn't seen a wage increase in 11 years. You won't find my name on a sunshine list. I do see waste in IT in the union side, but there's literally nothing we can do about it. The cost of getting rid of them is higher than the cost of keeping them and just making the best of it.

Agree with a lot there. People are stupid. Along with that, Alberta education is in full panic mode if UCP wins. Instead of the hiring they were to do, they are putting contract renewals on hold. It's bad. Really bad. But UCP is against healthcare and education. Can't get your buddies rich with the public system, so obviously it has to be dismantled.

[codetrap]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

You do realize every single doctor's office and x-ray place in town is a private corporation, yes? And physiotherapist... And psychologist... And virtually every other medical service not at a hospital...

Really? I had no idea that most of the 10000+ doctors in Alberta were independent contractors that bill the Ministry of Health directly using a per-defined fee schedule, comprising roughly 4 Billion in billing each year. None of which has anything to do with Covenant Health, who is not subject to the same scrutiny as AHS, who despite having only 11k employees and staffing 17 facilities takes almost a billion dollars each year. Seems to me the price tag of maintaining a parallel health entity with higher paid staff to accomplish the same thing is a bit of a waste... but that's the price of faith I guess?

[killramos]

Totally. We should switch everything to this covenant health instead and cut all the wasteful AHS employees loose. No parallels.

Essentially it cannot get much worse than letting AHS run things.

[kertejud2]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

Essentially it cannot get much worse than letting AHS run things.

Just more expensive.

[codetrap]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

Totally. We should switch everything to this covenant health instead and cut all the wasteful AHS employees loose. No parallels.

Essentially it cannot get much worse than letting AHS run things.

You're cute.

Anyways, back to work. Later.

[ThePenIsMightier]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

The large number of advance votes might make election night results slower to come in or possibly less accurate.

Final official results will not be available until Saturday or later.

- - - Updated - - -

.

I've heard this more than once now but I don't understand how it could be.
Do you know? 'Splain!

[bjstare]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

I've heard this more than once now but I don't understand how it could be.
Do you know? 'Splain!

I heard it's because they don't count advance votes as they come in... they wait until election day (or later?) and have to send them all to edmonton (if I'm wrong, I'm sure someone will chime in).

Why don't they count them as they come in, and make the results come out quicker on election day? Good question. Because government, that's why.

[ThePenIsMightier]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

I heard it's because they don't count advance votes as they come in... they wait until election day (or later?) and have to send them all to edmonton (if I'm wrong, I'm sure someone will chime in).

Why don't they count them as they come in, and make the results come out quicker on election day? Good question. Because government, that's why.

I don't think they should be counting them early because that info would get leaked and influence campaigning in close ridings.
But if they're not counted until election day, it should still be the same NET number of votes to count .

[ExtraSlow]

Yeah, the normal procedure for counting votes is that they are counted after the polls close at each polling station. For advance voting, because you could vote anywhere in the province, the paper ballots aren't sorted, and can't really be counted by the people at the advance polls. It would be far too easy to sort them incorrectly when there's hundreds of "polling subdivisions" they'd need to be sorted into. It's a very analog process.

"official" results are always delayed a day or two anyway. The election night results are ALWAYS projections. The extra uncertainty is likely to only effect a small number of ridings.

[ExtraSlow]

I also think it's a deliberate choice to not count advance ballots until after the polls close on election day. They don't want any results getting out and effecting results.
Then, election night is pretty busy, so counting the advance votes at that time would be a logistical nightmare.

[jltabot]

Affect

[A790]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

Affect

Pedant.

[bjstare]

IMO the fact that the whole thing is so analog is ridiculous in this day and age.

[lasimmon]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

Yeah, the normal procedure for counting votes is that they are counted after the polls close at each polling station. For advance voting, because you could vote anywhere in the province, the paper ballots aren't sorted, and can't really be counted by the people at the advance polls. It would be far too easy to sort them incorrectly when there's hundreds of "polling subdivisions" they'd need to be sorted into. It's a very analog process.

"official" results are always delayed a day or two anyway. The election night results are ALWAYS projections. The extra uncertainty is likely to only effect a small number of ridings.

If you voted in your riding in advance it will be counted on election day. If you voted in a different riding they are sent to Edmonton to be hand counted.

[HiTempguy1]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

IMO the fact that the whole thing is so analog is ridiculous in this day and age.

Honest question, do you think electronic is superior, and why?

Personally... I think this is as good as it gets. Paper with a sharpie is hard to fudge, you have to show up, in person, with ID to vote (or quite a bit of paperwork to support who you are and where you live).

I mean, we don't NEED quicker results. We basically know in under a week.

I don't think the costs of the election would be drastically different either with one or the other. There are HUGE security risks with electronic that are just too damn high, and its much easier to hide electrons than it is a paper trail when actual electoral fraud occurs.

[suntan]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

Really? I had no idea that most of the 10000+ doctors in Alberta were independent contractors that bill the Ministry of Health directly using a per-defined fee schedule, comprising roughly 4 Billion in billing each year. None of which has anything to do with Covenant Health, who is not subject to the same scrutiny as AHS, who despite having only 11k employees and staffing 17 facilities takes almost a billion dollars each year. Seems to me the price tag of maintaining a parallel health entity with higher paid staff to accomplish the same thing is a bit of a waste... but that's the price of faith I guess?

You don't see the parallel. Alright, you're in IT, and so I guess I should expect your business acumen to be near zero.

NDP did nothing about Covenant Health. So what's your point again?

[ExtraSlow]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

IMO the fact that the whole thing is so analog is ridiculous in this day and age.

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

Honest question, do you think electronic is superior, and why?

Personally... I think this is as good as it gets. Paper with a sharpie is hard to fudge, you have to show up, in person, with ID to vote (or quite a bit of paperwork to support who you are and where you live).

I mean, we don't NEED quicker results. We basically know in under a week.

I don't think the costs of the election would be drastically different either with one or the other. There are HUGE security risks with electronic that are just too damn high, and its much easier to hide electrons than it is a paper trail when actual electoral fraud occurs.

I don't feel the analog system is particularly troublesome, and the have been concerns with electronic voting systems elsewhere in the world.

[dirtsniffer]

Show up and mark the x.

[LilDrunkenSmurf]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

Honest question, do you think electronic is superior, and why?

Personally... I think this is as good as it gets. Paper with a sharpie is hard to fudge, you have to show up, in person, with ID to vote (or quite a bit of paperwork to support who you are and where you live).

I mean, we don't NEED quicker results. We basically know in under a week.

I don't think the costs of the election would be drastically different either with one or the other. There are HUGE security risks with electronic that are just too damn high, and its much easier to hide electrons than it is a paper trail when actual electoral fraud occurs.

I didn't need my ID, nor "quite a bit" of paperwork, to vote. I needed my voter card, and to be able to recite my name and address, and that was it.

[ExtraSlow]

Another poll tracker update with two new polls included. Appears that the UCP support has stabilized, breaking the downward trend.