But not by choice. Many
rural residents who have just received their (cards) were surprised
to learn that they are expected to travel beyond their local
community to vote despite their being a polling station much closer.
In some cases this involves driving 20 to 30 Km and past one or more
of those nearby polling stations! In one community near this writers
residence folks within walking distance of the polling station must
travel to one of two places some 10 to 20 Km away to vote whilst
residents from further away must vote at the local polling station
where they (the local residents) cannot. I must presume that this is
not an isolated incident in just our area as the practice of denying
local residents access to the local polling station seems to
encompass several of the polls that I have checked around here.
As one of those
affected I contacted Elections Ontario to make them aware that they
had a major problem with such arrangements being a big disincentive
to voters. Here is the response I received.
“Returning
Officers must consider a number of criteria to find the most suitable
voting locations including convenience for electors; the location’s
capacity; the extent to which electors are likely to be familiar with
the location; any significant barriers that electors will encounter
in reaching the location; and any other factor that may be relevant
to the proper conduct of the election.
Additionally,
recent amendments to the Election Act require that all voting
locations are fully accessible. To meet these new requirements,
Elections Ontario has developed comprehensive Site Accessibility
Standards to help Returning Officers find the most accessible voting
locations in their electoral district.
The
changes we have made to selecting voting locations mean that some
buildings which have held polls in the past are no longer used. In
some instances, electors may therefore have to travel further to a
voting location than in the past.
In
the examples you have cited, it is true that in some instances there
may be other voting locations that are closer geographically, however
these locations are already at capacity. The electors would then be
assigned to the next closest accessible location”.
Given that just a few
months before Elections Canada managed to find suitable locations to
enable voters to, for the most part, vote within or close to their
local community I find the excuses given disingenuous to say the
least. They say “The
electors would then be assigned to the next closest accessible
location”, however
in our own case there are no less that three
polls closer than the one to which we have been assigned!
I have, by using
multiple searches for addresses via the Elections
Ontario search engine, (not a user friendly
process) and by questioning local area residents, produced the map
below of one particular rural area which as far as I can tell is an
accurate representation of the poll locations. It clearly shows the
rather illogical way the polling places are allocated. We know that
Elections Ontario has been
under pressure to better accommodate those with physical disabilities
but doing so by putting disincentives to vote up for many other
voters hardly seems productive.
Click
on MAP to enlarge
(My
red overlay on the EO map, the circles represent polling station
locations)
A poll clerk at one of
the advanced polls told me that there is already considerable
discontent with the voting locations (this not from the area
mentioned in
the original post on my other blog), as another
who worked in previous polls said “It’s
broken on all levels and no amount of tweaking is going to fix it –
it needs a major overhaul.”, Whist talking about the federal
election it is clear that the same hold true at the provincial level.
The allocation and placement of polling stations is most certainly
'broken'!
Its
long past time for 'electronic voting' be it by phone, on the
internet or by machine at a poll location – preferably all
three! Elections Canada is working on such an initiative I believe.
Let us hope that any system devised is shared across the country with
both the provinces and municipalities- or will everybody devise their
own system each different from the next? I think we all know which
way that will go!
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