Confusion prevents some local Tories from voting

With confusion over when polls closed, delays in announcing results, and having to return to polling stations to vote twice in one day, electing Ernie Eves as Ontario’s new premier was an all-day event for some local Progressive Conservative party members Saturday.
About a dozen people in Fort Frances weren’t able to vote in the first ballot because of a mix-up over when the polls were open.
“Some people got calls telling them the polls were open until 11 a.m. when it was really 10 a.m.,” said Janet Judson, one of about 100 card-carrying Tories who ventured to La Place Rendez-Vous here to choose the new premier.
It seems election officials forgot Ontario spans two time zones so while documents stated first-ballot polls closed at 11 a.m., they really meant 11 a.m. (EST).
Meanwhile, Brian Williams, the returning officer for the Fort Frances poll, said a few people who arrived on time discovered they weren’t on the voting list at all.
“If the voters’ list and the cards telling people when to vote had gone out a bit earlier, this could have been avoided,” he said afterwards.
As for the vote itself, an automatic counting machine tallying the ballots was almost instantaneous. But when results from the first ballot came in, with 100 people voting and not a single ballot cast for candidate Tony Clement, officials were skeptical.
“We didn’t trust the machine. Nobody gets no votes,” one local electoral officer said.
But a manual recount found that Clement, in fact, had received none of the 100 votes cast in Fort Frances on the first ballot. Ernie Eves captured 46, followed by Jim Flaherty (40), Chris Stockwell (seven), and Witmer (four).
There were three spoiled ballots.
As the day wore on, local Tories from across the district gathered at the Rendez-Vous to watch the announcement of first-ballot results. When an announcer said the delay was due to problems with ballots in the north, the room erupted.
“Sure blame it on us,” joked on man.
They waited together for well over an hour before it was announced that a second ballot would be required.
Despite glitches, some still felt the one-member, one-vote system was efficient.
“I think it worked well, but we didn’t have a lot of people to contend with here,” said Ken Preston.
“A lot of people showed up and went home and came back again,” noted Williams. “In that sense, I prefer the mail-in ballot system.”