Certified candidate’s name not on McNab/Braeside ballot

By Bruce McIntyre

Darrell Carson, one of seven McNab/Braeside (MB) residents vying for one of three council seats up for grabs in this month’s municipal elections, was in a whisker of not being able to place an 'X' beside his name on the ballot because his name did not appear on any of the thousands of ballots mailed out to eligible voters last week.  

New official ballots were mailed out on Oct. 3, and for those residents were hopeful they could vote in advance of the Oct. 24 election date, MB Deputy-Clerk Angela Young relayed the good news.

 “If you received your voting information in the mail, including information for advance polls, they will not be recognized at the voting booth,” Young said. “It’s unfortunate this error occurred, fortunately the error was pointed out to our staff and new ballots went out starting this week. For those who prefer advance voting, there is plenty of time as the election is three weeks away and the service is in place for that.”

Darrell Carson, the candidate who brought the issue to the attention of township staff when he became aware of the ballot inaccuracies, is satisfied the way township staff handled the situation.

“The staff were front and centre with management and associated interests when the announcement was made in reference to the ballots,” he said. “I am thankful that the issue was raised promptly by residents and I think there will definitely have to be a full review of the error.”

He concluded by insisting that any associated costs stemming from this incident is not put on to the backs of MB taxpayers.

“I hope that the additional costs to get the corrected voter information cards printed and mailed out should not be on the taxpayer as this should never have occurred in the first place,” he said.

Chief administrative officer/clerk Lindsay Lee said the cards that any of the old ballots currently in circulation should be shredded to ensure they are not circulated again leading up to the election.

This is another case of MB dodging what could have had a devastating effect on the issue of trust with residents similar to what occurred in 2018. Several areas of the province experienced a massive sudden surge on a new electronic voting system. During the 21st century several small municipalities slowly transitioned to faster and cost-efficient systems including telephone and internet sites to tally the votes.

During that election, MB was one of a handful of Ottawa Valley municipalities using an internet-based ballot counting system as the central factor for counting votes in order to speed up the process. Early in the evening several towns reported system overloads as voters tried to log on at the same time and those actions was overwhelming demand on the Internet and telephone voting system provincially.

Thousands of Ontarians were unable to log on to vote, including several Ottawa Valley voters, and the affected municipalities were granted a 24-hour extension in order for those affected a chance to register their choice.

Those affected locally, Laurentian Valley, Pembroke, Petawawa, and Whitewater Region were the four other municipalities in Renfrew County using the Dominion Voting System, as were many across the province.

McNab Braeside, along with Greater Madawaska and Arnprior were not using a product built by Dominion, and that choice saved MB extra costs for staffing, IT repairs and other affected services related to the vote-count issues.

Five Renfrew County municipalities (Laurentian Valley, Pembroke, Petawawa, Renfrew and Whitewater Region) used the Dominion Voting System, as were many across the province in which results were delayed when the voting period was extended by 24 hours.

Aware that MB had evaded vote-count controversies twice, McNab/Braeside chief administration officer Lindsay Lee issued a media release outlining the problem as a means to correct the issue and just as important, and to ensure that the printing issue did not become a massive and controversial topic, which is then spread across social media sites.

Some of those sites like QAnon that create false and misleading narratives in order to erode faith in public institutions. That is the reason she authorized the media release and reminded those with an up-to-date ballot can access the phone and internet sites. Neither one of those two systems experienced any issues in 2018.

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