Long lines, ballot shortages and crashing websites mar Calgary election
Posted Oct 17, 2017 8:27 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
If Elections Calgary staffers could have a mulligan, they’d probably take it.
Long lines and polling stations running out of ballots are just a couple of the embarrassing highlights, or lowlights, from Election Day.
People in some areas faced waits of two hours as the crush of after-work voters seemed to overwhelm some polling stations, with some even temporarily running out of ballots.
In some cases, frustrated voters started to leave the lines, which is not what candidates wanted given how close some of the races were. They took to social media to implore voters to stay in line, reminding them that anyone in line at 8 p.m. would not be turned away.
The issues had many calling for the city to use digital voting machine next time around, which could speed up voting and would speed up reporting.
But even the digital side of the election let everyone down this time around. The website which was reporting the results crashed several times and eventually returned as a bare-bones, no frills, text-only site.
With all that being said voter turnout was incredibly high. After seeing three times as many people vote in advanced polling compared to the last election, the final turnout was 58 per cent overall.
At this point it’s not clear why there were so many issues, although a debrief with the media will happen Tuesday.
