“I was very unimpressed,” said Sottile. “If you want more people to vote, you need to have enough polling stations.
“I have never seen these kinds of lineups at a polling station. At 4 p.m., the Caruso Club parking lot was full.”
And Margaret Greaves, 73, a resident at Extendicare York, said dozens of people hadn't yet voted when the poll closed in the nursing home in the early afternoon.
“There were a lot of irate people,” Greaves said. “It was total chaos here for awhile.”
So she called John Rodriguez's campaign, and he and some volunteers arrived a little while later and helped the residents vote by proxy.
“We didn't know what else to do,” she said. “It was crazy … Just because we're in a nursing home doesn't mean we don't have the right to vote.”
City clerk Caroline Hallsworth said Tuesday that a combination of factors caused problems Monday, and will become part of the learning process for the next vote. Her department was able to deliver online voting for the first time, but kept the election budget the same by reducing the number of polling stations. They tried to centralize the stations, and people were allowed to vote at any station in the city, rather than at a specific one in their ward.
That led to some busy polling stations — and voter confusion — and four of them had to stay open past 8 p.m. to accommodate everyone who wanted to vote. For example, the Caruso Club was one of the busiest polls in the city, with people lining up before the poll even opened.
“People are patriotic and feel strongly about voting,” she said. “So in the morning, we had a huge lineup when we opened at 10. It takes a while to get that group through.”
Problems at the Caruso club were compounded when “someone stepped on a power bar, and it turned all the equipment off,” Hallsworth said. “So we had to reboot all the equipment.”
While the average wait time for voters was 15 minutes, she said, it was much longer at the busier voting sites.
“We had some who had to wait longer than that, and we acknowledge that,” she said.
“We had a very strong turnout – probably the highest we've had in any recent election … But with the 'vote anywhere,' voting patterns changed dramatically. We had some locations which were expected to very busy, that weren't.”
Should the city decide to use the same approach in 2018, she said they will have data from this year to rely on when deciding where the polls will be located.
“We will be informed by the voting patterns from this election as to where people voted,” she said. “Certainly we recognize there are pockets in the community that may need two polls.”
While results were delayed until almost 9 p.m., Hallsworth said all voters were able to cast their ballots by 8:30. And as far as issues at Extendicare York, she said the polling station was there in the morning for the same number of hours it was in 2010.
“Traditionally, at nursing and retirement homes, there are three-hour polls,” she said. “(But) we'll have to look at the whole delivery model for 2018.”
By the numbers:
Election 2014 (unofficial):
-- Total number of eligible voters: 117,701
-- Total ballots cast: 59,686, meaning voter turnout was 50.7%
Election 2010:
-- Total number of eligible voters: 115,318
-- Total ballots cast: 57,373, meaning voter turnout was 49.75%
Election 2006:
-- Total number of eligible voters: 137,107
-- Total ballots cast: 55,963, meaning voter turnout was 40.82%
Election 2003:
-- Total number of eligible voters: 135,754
-- Total ballots cast: 54,338, meaning voter turnout was 40.03%
