Irregularities dog Burridge polling stations

Jeff Green | Oct 13, 2011

Workers who showed up at the Burridge fire hall early on Election Day, October 6, to work at Polls number 99 and 100 in Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington, were surprised to find the building locked up.

As the time approached 9 a.m. when the polls were scheduled to open, Eva Ball, one of the polling clerks, finally received instructions from the Township of South Frontenac about how to get in the building and disable the alarm system.

“It took until 9:30 for us to get set up, and there was a couple that had arrived at the polling station early, before 9, because they had a medical appointment in Ottawa,” Ball told the News.

The problems getting into the hall were just the start, Ball added.

As the day wore on, more and more would-be voters arrived and said they had not received voting cards. Even though they were still eligible to vote, at least one person decided not to.

“One woman said she was so upset that after living in the same house for 45 years she had not received a card. She threw up her hands and said she wasn’t going to vote at all and she left,” said Ball.

About 100 people showed up at the Buridge polling station without voting cards, according to Ball, who was working as a polling clerk for the first time in this election. There were an estimated 12,000 missing cards in the riding.

Because of the way polling divisions are drawn up, a number of voters had to come to Burridge all the way from Perth Road.

Larry Zadow, the returning officer for the LFL&A riding, said that he was aware of some problems but that overall the voting went off pretty well in the riding. He said that his office, which was opened on September 1 in preparation for the election, has nothing to do with voting lists and voting cards.

“To be honest with you, we don’t do much with the voting list. We get that from Elections Ontario,” he said.

Zadow said that one of the functions his office performed was to visit each polling station to make sure they are handicapped accessible.

But according to Eva Ball, there is a 4-inch lip at the doorway at the Burridge fire hall, and people in wheelchairs needed help to get into the station.

Janice Sadloka was the Deputy Returning Officer at Poll 99.

She said she has worked on elections quite a few times and, “It seems the same issues keep coming up. We are always dealing with voters who did not receive cards and ones that are not on the voters’ list. When that happens we need to look at where they live, and sometimes they are supposed to be at another polling station, which does not make it easy for them to vote. The same thing happened in the federal election. We fill in forms to have the voters’ list updated but nothing seems to happen. The whole system needs to be upgraded.”

While acknowledging there are problems, Larry Zadow said that things should be kept in perspective.

“We have over 100,000 voters in this riding. If we have problems in less than 1% of cases, that’s not that bad,” he said.