Local residents have one more day to cast their ballots after the Town of Bradford West Gwillimbury’s online voting system broke down Monday.
“It’s a disaster,” said BWG Deputy Mayor James Leduc, at a party at Minho Restaurant in downtown Bradford, where a couple dozen people gathered to celebrate Election Night.
“Does it shake our confidence in the system? Sure it does. I’m frustrated the system wasn’t stress-tested enough. We won’t be strictly online voting again. We’ll have both systems again.”
BradfordToday received an email from the Town of BWG shortly before 8 p.m., when polls were expected to close and the official election results would have started to come in, explaining the voting period would be extended until 8 p.m. on Oct. 23 “due to issues with the voting system provider.”
"The service provider, Dominion Voting, experienced issues handling the volume of users on both the Internet and telephone websites. This was not unique to BWG," said Caleigh Clubine, the town's community relations officer. “You can still vote by phone or Internet, or at the library between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m."
Residents are invited to another Election Night celebration Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Bradford and District Memorial Community Centre, Leduc said.
Several other communities around Ontario were also affected by crashing online voting systems.
Mayor Rob Keffer said it is "so unfortunate" there were problems in BWG.
“I’m sure the integrity is still there for online voting and this is just a glitch. We thank people for their patience and their understanding," he said.
Ward 1 candidate Dave Wood, an app developer who has spoken out against the security of online voting, called Monday’s breakdown “just poor planning.”
“It doesn’t take much for a server to handle our town’s population. It shouldn’t be crashing at the last minute like this,” he said.
He noted, since it is unlikely 100 per cent of the population vote in an average election and more than 20 per cent of eligible BWG voters had already cast their ballots by Monday, that it is unlikely the online voting system would be dealing with a large number this evening.
As of Monday morning, 5,603 votes had been submitted in the BWG municipal election, making up a little more than 23 per cent of the eligible voters, according to Clubine.
Wood questioned how many servers Dominion Voting Systems was using and whether they had multiple communities being run off the same one.
“It’s kind of embarrassing,” Wood said.
Although voting has been extended 24 hours, Leduc said he has no confidence that people who had difficulty voting Monday will try again, or that the voting system will not break down again.
“We’re going to be in the same pickle tomorrow,” he said. “I’m sure this company has lost a lot of credibility.”
The town will consider new locations, such as the Bradford and District Memorial Community Centre, for an Election Night celebration Tuesday, Leduc added.
Some residents who had gathered at Minho for an election celebration were upset at the news they had to wait another day for results.
“I’m angry — very, very angry,” said Ingrid Schienke, who voted last week. “Who’s responsible. My heart goes out to all these councillors.”
“It was very simple to vote. Easy peasy — they made it easy. I just feel bad. That’s what happens when technology gets in the way,” said Bob Pegg, questioning why the town is not extending voting later than 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Deputy mayor candidate Iftikhar Ahmad said the town “did the right thing” by extending voting 24 hours.
“Throughout this election, I have said that I felt the people of Bradford needed to be given more opportunities to make their voices heard. Our electoral process does just that, and for those people to have been deprived that opportunity by a system failure would have been an injustice,” he said.
“I am hopeful that this extension will give everyone who wants to be heard the opportunity to be."
Other BWG candidates expressed their dismay at voting being extended.
“In essence, we had 10 days of voting. (Dominion) guaranteed they could handle the numbers. Maybe we should go back to a paper ballot. They ensured us the system could handle it,” said Ward 6 incumbent Mark Contois.
“I’m shocked,” added Ward 6 candidate Lisa Hawkins, adding she predicted the crash might happen. “I said, ‘Everyone is going to come home from work and vote on the last day. I just hope the system is not going to crash.’ And I was right.
“It’s another day, an opportunity for people to vote. I’m just going to be positive. You just have to roll with it and make lemonade.”
Did you have a problem voting? Tell us your story. Contact [email protected].
— With files from Miriam King
