Letter: Voter not happy with Morinville advance polls

My mother and I voted on Oct 14th. There were three poll desks set up at the Rendez Vous Centre. For most of the time we had to wait, two of them had only one or two people at them while the third had 14-16 people waiting in line. At one of the desks with no voters waiting in line at it, one lady was playing on her phone and the other was yawning. Why can’t all three of the desks mark off all the voters that come? Morinville is pretty small. Obviously two of the desks were not over-worked and could have taken some of the voters in the long lineup.

There were three voting booths but they would only allow the people in the long lineup to use just the one. I wasn’t aware that you could only use one booth for everyone to mark their ballots. The other two booths went unused.

Our polling desk ladies would only take one person at a time and everyone else had to wait until that one person marked their ballot and brought it back. There were three voting booths for marking our ballots. Why wouldn’t they let us use the other two to mark our ballots and speed up the line?

In addition, I brought my 86-year-old mother to vote and there wasn’t anywhere she could sit down after marking her ballot until I was able to finally make it to the front of the line and mark my ballot. One of the ladies at the desk with no voters at it was very reluctant to allow my mother to sit at one of the chairs near her desk. The only thing on the chair was the desk lady’s coat. This is ludicrous. If you want the seniors to vote, you need to make some accommodations for the infirm. If you want to get the voters out, don’t make it so inconvenient to vote!

Debra LeBlanc
Morinville

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13 Comments

  1. I don’t see how it is the polling stations fault that several people assigned to that particular polling station all showed up at the same time. They were doing their jobs properly as prescribed by Elections Canada to maintain proper procedure and avoid potential vote tampering.

    People are assigned to particular polling stations based on residency within the riding and their votes must be made at those polling stations to be counted appropriately. It has to do with proper voting procedure and ensuring privacy and maintaining the secrecy of each person’s ballot.

    While perhaps they could have allowed for a chair closer to the doors rather than the polling station, again, it is about maintaining the privacy and secrecy that they likely would not allow someone to sit near the polling station desk.

    • Pennie Belliveau I don’t think people understood that there were 3 polling stations in one. 602,603 and 604. You had to go to the station based on where you live. There is a book with your name in it. You can’t have that book being used by others as I’m sure it would create quite the problem. Our line took a little longer due to the resident getting married and moved. Really wasn’t a big deal in the scheme of things. And yes, hats off to the people who believe in the democratic process to give up their thanksgiving weekend so that we could exercise our democratic rights.

  2. Those are the election rules. You’re best to complain to elections Canada about the inadequacy of manning.
    Be thankful that people are actually participating in their right to cast their ballots.

  3. You can request a pollster one to you as well. It’s your legal right. And they will come. Not sure why senior centres don’t do this. Have the stations go to them.

  4. Actually we voted this weekend and were in and out in 10min, I didn’t experience anything that’s you were complaining about!
    Hats off to the ppl that gave up their thanksgiving weekend to sit and wait for voters to come
    I know they get paid, however I’m sure it was boring at times and I appreciate their time!

  5. You can only vote at your poll number, so if a bunch of people show up from your poll at the same time you do, it sucks. That said, we had some complaints ourselves about the advance polls in Morinville. It just wasn’t a great experience.

  6. All polling stations in this province I have ever seen obviously I haven’t seen all of them. have always had chairs for people who are waiting and holding a small child or someone waiting for someone they brought to vote,There are many reasons people may have to sit down. The idea is to encourage people to go out and vote. it isn’t meant to be an uncomfortable or impossible endurance test.

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