The Chief Electoral Officer (“CEO”) of Ontario is an independent officer of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario who is responsible, with the assistance of his headquarters office (“Elections Ontario”), for overseeing the general administration of the voting process in provincial by-elections and general elections (“election events”) in accordance with the Election Act. A Returning Officer is appointed for each electoral district and, under the direction of the CEO, is the official responsible for conducting election events in their district, tabulating results, and declaring the winning candidate.
The Legislative Assembly of Ontario will be composed of up to 124 elected Members of the Provincial Parliament – one for each of Ontario electoral districts - following the next general election which is currently scheduled for Thursday, June 7th, 2018.
BACKGROUND
Leading up to an electoral event, Returning Officers are provided with a package of mapping products. These mapping products show geographical and administrative features that fall within their electoral district, such as polling division boundaries, addresses, assessment parcels, road networks, water bodies, railways, transmission lines and places.
Included within a package are the following mapping products:
Folded Map: This is a 36” x 44” map of Ontario showing all electoral districts. It is a single-sheet, coloured map, printed on glossy paper and distributed folded to 1/16th the size (9” x 11”).
Wall Map Sets: A wall map is a 34” x 44” map that shows an overview of an electoral district. A wall map displays electoral geography, such as electoral district and polling division boundaries, a grid system and associated grid legend providing a spatial reference to where each polling division is located, line features such as road networks, transmission lines, railways and watercourses, and polygon features such as official places, water bodies and parks.
Small urban electoral districts are usually captured within one wall map. However, electoral districts that cover a larger area (such as rural electoral districts), often require additional wall maps in order to show insets of cities or towns at a larger scale. A Wall Map Set consists of the main overview wall map and all associated wall map insets.
Mapbooks: Each polling division within an electoral district is represented on an 11” x 17” map page, and each map page is 3-hole punched and packaged together in a matching binder to form a mapbook. Mapbooks include electoral geography features (such as polling division and electoral district boundaries), point features (such as address numbers), line features (such as road networks, railways, transmission lines and watercourses) and polygon features (such as assessment parcels, place boundaries, water bodies and parks).
Many mapbook pages require inset maps to be generated and included within the mapbook in order to provide a larger scale view of different neighbourhoods within a polling division. Typically, the number of pages within a mapbook for a district can range from 150 pages to 700 pages in total.
Returning Officers use mapping product packages to help plan and administer an electoral event. They also distribute printed mapping product packages to nominated candidates within their electoral district.
In accordance with the Elections Act, Returning Officers are required to undertake a review of their electoral district on an annual basis and, if necessary, make changes to their polling division boundaries based on factors such as population increases and new developments. Following the revision of any polling division boundaries, up-to-date mapping products may be printed and distributed to the Returning Officer.
The objective of this RFQ is to solicit proposals from proponents to provide Elections Ontario with mapping printing services: print and finish mapping products, assemble and ship mapping product packages. Detailed requirements can be found within the Scope section of this RFQ.
All documentation required to submit a proposal to this RFQ is available from MERX.
