Voting trouble

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A Brantford woman says the clerks at her polling station were poorly trained and unprofessional. She had the opportunity to vote not once, but twice yesterday. And what really disturbed her is that both her ballots were opened and shown to people when the secrecy of a vote is supposed to be maintained.

Elections Canada says it’s an unusual complaint, but Brittany Beales of Brantford says “the whole thing was confusion from start to finish.”

Brittany did not have a voters card so when she arrived at the Woodman Community Centre polling station, she had to fill out a change of address form. She then proceeded to vote. After marking the ballot the clerk stopped her from putting it in the box and told her she had to fill out a registration form too. Brittany did that, returned to the clerk who gave her another ballot to mark. In the meantime her first ballot was opened up by another voter who’d been given the ballot by mistake.

“She told me she was very confused, there had been 200 people at her table that day and she took my ballot and that one went in the box as well. So I voted twice.”

But before her 2 ballots made their way into the box the clerk did something Brittany couldn’t believe. “There was a line up of people behind me. She opened up my ballot and she went like this, and she showed it to me and says is this who you voted for and I said yes, that’s my second ballot and people in line were looking at each other and they were shocked.”

Brittany says voting should be made easy and comfortable. She fears if a first time voter was faced with a negative experience like hers was they may not want to vote again.

The commissioner of Canada Elections is responsible for the enforcement of the Canada Elections Act which states that a marked ballot should be kept secret. It says if anyone thinks an offence was committed at a polling station they should submit a complaint to their office. Brittany plans on lodging a complaint.