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Ward 1 has highest voter
turn-out in Kincardine election By Liz Dadson |
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With plenty of interest in the Kincardine municipal election, it was no surprise that overall voter turn-out was 51.32 per cent. Ward 1 (former Town of Kincardine) had the highest turn-out, at 55.47 per cent of the 5,143 eligible voters, while Ward 2 (former Kincardine Township) was second with 51.56 per cent of the 2,783 voters; and Ward 3 (former Bruce Township) was in third with 41.18 per cent of the 2,178 voters. Clerk Donna MacDougall said there were fewer than 40 rejected ballots. Originally, there were 140 but election staff was able to rectify more than 90 of them. "In some cases, the voter hadn't signed the declaration form," she said, "or the ballot wasn't in the secrecy envelope when it was mailed back to the office, or the declaration was in the secrecy envelope instead." In those instances, staff was able to contact the voter and correct the problem, said MacDougall. As for the delay in election results Monday night (Oct. 25), she said the electronic tabulators had to be tested twice to make sure they were operating correctly. "We conducted a test the Friday before and things ran fine," said MacDougall. "But when we tested the machines Monday morning, we kept getting an error message. They couldn't read the ballots properly." It was discovered that the office printer used to print the ballots for the test, was not lining up the bar codes properly so the machines could not read the ballots, MacDougall said. "The actual ballots that go out to the voters are printed by DataFix," she said. "We don't print those. But we get the test ballots electronically and print those off. It took us some time to confirm that the printer we used was not printing the test ballots properly." Once the test ballots were re-printed and the test conducted, the machines worked fine and the real ballots could be tabulated, she said. "But by that time, it was 5:30 p.m. and we knew we would be delayed," she said. Unfortunately, the election staff must stay in the office so couldn't get that information out to the public right away. After all the ballots were entered, the machines tallied the results and they were announced at 10:30 p.m.
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It was a close race for the mayor's job, with incumbent Larry Kraemer defeating deputy mayor Laura Haight by only 38 votes. MacDougall said that if it had been a tie vote, a re-count would have been done, automatically, by the clerk. However, in this case, council has the option of directing a re-count, she said. Haight could ask council to have that done or the request could come from a council member or a member of the public. Or an eligible voter could send an application for a re-count to the Superior Court of Justice, said MacDougall. The request or application must be made within 30 days of the election - for all or just specified positions on council, MacDougall said. The inaugural meeting of the new Kincardine council will be Dec. 1 at 5 p.m. To be sworn in are mayor Larry Kraemer, deputy mayor Anne Eadie, and councillors Maureen Couture, Kenneth Craig, Ron Coristine, Jacqueline Faubert, Mike Leggett, Candy Hewitt and Randy Roppel. To see the break-down of those who voted for each candidate, by ward, click here Scrolling stops when you move your mouse inside the scroll area. You can click on the ads for more
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