Phantom ballots an issue of concern

Jeff Green | Oct 26, 2022

The electronic voting system that is now well established in Frontenac County and Addington Highlands requires only that voters declare themselves eligible, and provide their birth date and a PIN, in order to vote.

Ballots arrive by mail to eligible voters, and there is a process to get on the voting list and receive a PIN right up until election day at the township office for each municipality.

The voting list, which is provided to local townships by MPAC (the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation) is not set up to automatically remove names when people leave their place of residence when they grow up.

The Frontenac News has received reports of ballots arriving for adult children who have moved away years earlier, opening up the system to fraud.

One of the candidates in Portland District of South Frontenac, Shane Peters, raised the issue in an email to the News.

He laid out the scenario in this way: “I know of a household that had 4 voter cards mailed to it. 3 of those cards are for people who have not lived at that household in over 10 years. 2 of them are registered voters in other municipalities and one has not lived in the province of Ontario in over 10 years. None of them own property in South Frontenac. The 4th person also knows the DOB of those other 3 non-eligible voters that got cards. Now I know that this person is not a fraud and using these 3 cards to gain 3 extras votes but if our system is sending cards for people that are over a decade out of eligibility what check and balances are on place?”

Peters brought the matter to the attention of South Frontenac Clerk Angela Maddox.

Her email response to him indicated that it is the responsibility of the people at the house where the extra ballots are sent to get the names off the list.

“Similar to any other mail, if something comes addressed to an occupant that no longer lives there, the typical practice should be to 'return to sender' and to indicate 'no longer this address' or 'moved',” she wrote.

Maddox pointed out that the township does not “know when anyone moves unless they tell us, this includes the Voters List.”

She said that “the practice of opening a Voter Instruction Letter and voting with those credentials when they do not belong to you is in violation of the municipal act.”

The News contacted Cathy MacMunn, Chief Administrative Officer of Central Frontenac, and Tara Mieske, the Clerk/Planning Manager of North Frontenac, and they both indicated that there is no mechanism to remove names from the voting list unless a property is sold.

MacMunn said that residents can bring the extra Voting Instruction Letters to the township office, and fill out a form to have the name removed.

“It's the same situation for all of us,” MacMunn said, “we use the same system.”

The municipalities also do not know how many of the voters on their list are no longer residents of the township.

“We have no way of knowing how many there are,” said Tara Mieske.