So the ongoing saga of how Elections Ontario did everything but make elections easy in the riding of Simcoe-Grey continues.
As writer Kristen Smith detailed two weeks ago in the treeware edition of the E-B, residents of Nottawa were told to traverse to Ravenna in order to cast a ballot in last Thursday’s election. Now, it seems, Nottawa residents weren’t the only ones in the area expected to trudge well out of their way to vote.
OK, so it’s not exactly South Africa in 1994, when black South Africans were finally granted the vote and were forced to wait for hours in order to exercise their franchise. But it’s still a pain in the butt for voters to traipse all over the western part of the riding — especially in an era of low voter turnout.
Not only did Nottawa residents have to drive more than 30 minutes to vote, it seems because they were assigned to a polling station in Ravenna that it displaced Ravenna residents — who then had to go to the Toronto Ski Club.
Duntroon residents, in the meantime, were assigned to a polling station at the Manito Shrine Club on Fairgrounds Road — a location that would have been far more convenient for Nottawa residents than the community hall in Ravenna.
I mean, how did local returning officials come up with this complicated system in the first place? It seems to me the organization of the invasion of Normandy was simpler than shuffling voters in Simcoe-Grey from place to place…
It springs to mind that we should rouse The Admiral to do another ‘Hitler reacts’ video, perhaps ‘Hitler reacts to Nottawa residents being forced to go to Nottawa to vote…’
