The ballots were cast and the results were tallied — Bradford West Gwillimbury residents completed their first municipal election using online and phone voting Tuesday.
So, how did it go?
We asked residents on various platforms, including BradfordToday.ca, Facebook, and through email, to share their experiences and thoughts about what it was like voting this year.
Here are some of the comments we received.
I tried first online and the little circle kept spinning and didn’t go past English or French options. The second try got me to the alpha number sequence that you had to re type which it wouldn’t let me do.
I finally tried calling the number and three tries and three disconnects.
I was fuming by this point as I take pride in the fact that I never miss voting on any level of government. If you don’t vote you are not entitled to complain!
When I watched CP24 … they had mentioned that there was a glitch in the voting system, and we would have a second chance to vote up until 8 p.m. I came home from work and called the number without any glitches.
There should still be voting stations to manually cast your votes.
— Debbi Burns
Thirty-nine attempts in one hour over the phone. Yes I’m an idiot for re-reading the paperwork at the last minute. But 39 attempts!!!!
— Alana Mathers
It seems to be a great system with the ability to vote early. I'm hoping there is larger voter turnout. It was an easy and convenient system. Once the kinks are out it'll all be good.
— Debbie Walsh
I had no problem with online voting. We were given plenty of days to do so. That being said I'm sure the majority of voters did it Oct. 22. I had voted on Tuesday, Oct. 16. There isn't any way to avoid a bottleneck on the last day. They should have known this prior. Maybe people should be assigned a block of days on their voting cards. Computers are only so reliable.
— Tracy Sgroi
I have the following comments about the online voting experience:
1. Neither my husband or I were on the voting list. It was a good thing I checked as a lark, never expecting not to be there since we have been at the same address in Bradford for over 40 years. My son, who is also a Bradford resident, received his information in the mail, as well as that for a roommate who has not lived at that address for over 15 years. Does anyone know what data was used to compile the lists? Obviously it was not current. The town service people helped us get the IDs and PINs we needed, but there was a lot of confusion among the staff as to how to make this happen.
2. When we got our new PINs, the staff informed us that we should not worry if someone else got the original ones (if they ever existed) instead of us since they could not use them without our birth dates. This is true. I have a friend who lives in Newmarket who, when he went to vote with the information mailed to him, the process did not recognize him as a valid voter. When he went to a help centre it was finally identified that the system had the wrong birthday for him. So apparently you can't vote (even) if you know your birthday!
3. My husband does not embrace the voting process with as much zeal as I do, but I finally did convince him to vote early, thank goodness, because if he ran into the problems people had yesterday he would not have bothered. It would have been so easy to have taken his information and voted for him. I know this is a crime but in the privacy of my own home, who would know?
4. I voted early and system response was good. I did find that it was not clear how to proceed from one option to the next (mayor, to deputy, to ward, to school board) if you did not actually want to place a vote in each category. I wonder how many other people had this same issue and did not take the time to figure it out and just randomly voted for that position just to get to the next option. After all they did not care about it so why should it matter? Only to the candidate. I also wonder if there is a way to place a protest vote with this system — maybe not an issue in a municipal election but something that one might want to do at the provincial or federal level.
5. To me, there had always been something satisfying about marking an X and then placing the ballot yourself into a ballot box. There is just some assurance that your vote was received and would be counted. I did not get this same satisfaction from sending my vote to the cloud. Is anybody there? Is anyone listening? How do I know?
6. As you have gathered, I am not a fan of online voting. I do not think it will have the desired effect of getting the younger people out to vote, and this experience has shown it has way more potential to not work for those of us who were willing to get out and vote. Voting is a privilege, it should take some thought and a little effort. The old system worked for me — this one not so much.
— Cheryl Blair
My husband and I voted on Oct. 12 online. No problem — very, very easy.
— Jean Greer
My wife and I received voting information in the mail. We each received an envelope which included a secret code for using by telephone or online. It worked well. However, we also received two separate envelopes for two adult children who have not lived with us for several years. What was to stop us from using their secret codes to cast ballots for the candidates that we favoured? Given the sleazy political attacks by one of the candidates during the campaign, I would not be at all surprised to learn that supporters of that lowlife might resort to casting votes for non-existent residents, if the opportunity were to arise.
— Robert Wagner
The glitch that I found frustrating when we went to vote in the advance poll was that the Internet address in the mailed handout … did not work. I tried three different servers and finally just Googled ‘Bradford advanced poll 2018 election’ and got the correct location and voted in a couple of minutes.
— William Greer
I was a scrutineer in East Gwillimbury. Polls closed, paper votes were counted, and I was out of there with results for my candidate by 8:25 p.m. By the time we arrived at the party, everything was announced. I don't think enough has been done to test an online system, and I think BWG has left itself wide open to challenges to the results.
— Just T
Dominion FAILED to provide a system that was capable to meet the demands. At the very least they should have had people working during the slowdown and fixed it ASAP. Telling us that they fixed it as soon as they were notified (90 minutes into the problem) is not good enough. I wondered if they are adequately insured in case some candidates decide to sue them. I chose to vote days in advance. Those who voted during the failure were perfectly in the right to make that choice. That is how balloting works.
— AnthonyBradford
No problems at all. Easy peasy. Sat at my computer in my pjs with morning coffee. It was effortless and stress free. If people had done what was suggested and did their voting early, not at the last minute, I feel that there wouldn't have been any issues.
— Connie Keeler
Two members of the household both were unable to cast ballots. Please take (BWG Deputy Mayor James) Leduc's suggestion and offer paper ballots for those that prefer to vote in this manner and allow online for those that prefer that method. First time we have been unable to vote in an election thanks to Dominion (Voting Systems) and ... poor job of stress testing by the provider, plain and simple.
— Local Bradford resident
