It's been seven weeks since the provincial election and Vanessa Delurey says she's still waiting to be paid for her work tallying the votes.

She worked a 15-hour day as a deputy returning officer in the Mount Scio district and says she hasn't seen a dollar.

"We can't have a democracy unless people are willing to work at the election process," she said. "And I think if you ask more people like me who are still waiting, [we] are probably not as inclined to want to do it next time around if it's going to be quite a struggle to get paid for it."

Premier Dwight Ball has had his new government in place since an election seven weeks ago. But some workers on election night say they're still trying to get paid. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press)

Delurey said she was asked by Elections NL if she wanted to work, likely because she's worked for previous elections.

From those experiences, she said she expected to wait a few weeks before her money arrived.

"But I don't recall having to wait this long or having to make as many phone calls to find out what's happening with the previous elections," she said.

Delurey said that with the half-day of training factored in, she's waiting for more than $300.

Switch to direct deposit may cause delays

There were nearly 4,000 people hired to work the May 16 provincial election, says chief electoral officer Bruce Chaulk. All were told they could expect payment for their service in four to six weeks.

"So essentially now we're into the seventh week ... which is longer than we expected, and longer than I wanted," he said.

Chaulk estimates there are a handful of people like Delurey left waiting for payment and says there are a number of reasons why that may be.

Bruce Chaulk is the chief electoral officer for the province. (Garrett Barry/CBC)

Last year, the Department of Finance let Elections NL use a one-time vendor process to hire and pay workers, he said. That let Elections NL pay people without entering them into the payment system as a permanent vendor.

"[It] basically allows you to create a new vendor for one time and then it's all gone after that, and then a cheque comes out and away it goes," he said.

This year, he said the department wanted everybody to be set up in the system. That involved a lot of back-and-forth with people if the information they supplied had a mistake or was missing, and it also meant people were paid by direct deposit, which takes longer and requires banking information, he said.

He doesn't blame the delays entirely on that change, but said "it certainly didn't help."

Now entered into system

As well, anyone who makes more than $500 a year with the provincial government has to go through the payroll system, which also takes time, he said.

That means if someone who signed up to work for the election also had a few hours here and there for other government bodies like the Arts and Culture Centre or the Health Sciences Centre, they'd have to get set up for payroll if their election hours pushed them over that $500 limit, he said.

There were also people who phoned Chaulk's office that were expecting cheques and didn't notice the money had been deposited into their accounts.

As for Delurey's concerns that those who had to wait or are still waiting for their money may be dissuaded from working future elections, Chaulk said since their name and information is now in the system, there likely won't be a hold up after the next vote.

"Now they're set up. And as long as the government doesn't delete them from the system, they'll still be there in 2023."



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