Hundreds of people were stuck waiting in line for hours on the last night of revisions to the electoral list.
An unknown issue with a registration form landed Melissa Bluman-Soued and her mother, who is blind, in line at the English Montreal School Board for hours last week.
“My mother is blind and physically can’t walk that much, so I didn’t want to schlep her there if I didn’t have to,” Bluman-Soued said. “In the end, I had to take her on the last day of (revisions), and it was just a total madhouse.”
Oct. 15 was the last day for revisions to the EMSB’s electoral list. Anyone who wasn’t registered by the deadline at the end of September had to revise their information in person during one of four sessions held at EMSB headquarters in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. More than 300 people showed up that night, according to EMSB spokesperson Michael Cohen, causing frustration among many future voters.
Cohen said long lines stemmed in part from an outdated school board elections system involving arbitrary rules that complicate the process.
“The system in place right now makes it very difficult to get people to vote,” he said.
That’s also the view of Quebec English School Board Association president Joe Ortona, who is running for re-election as EMSB chair.
“What we’re seeing is a repetition of the same problems … that we’ve been talking about for over two decades,” he said. “That is a system that is outdated, a system that is complicated, that people have difficulty understanding.”
Among other things, Ortona decried the arduous process of getting on the electoral list to begin with, limited revision hours, a single location for revisions and the fact that they must be carried out in person.
“It’s deliberately done to hinder the process to keep the voter turnout low, to make it difficult to get on the list,” he said. “I believe the government just thinks that a low voter turnout makes their argument to turn us into a service centre stronger, which is a horrible argument that I reject entirely. But they seem to be very stubborn in maintaining that position.”
Élections Québec said it thinks the process of getting onto the electoral list could be improved, adding that it made suggestions in 2010, “but they did not result in legislative changes.”
The offices of Education Minister Bernard Drainville and Jean-François Roberge, Minister Responsible for Democratic Institutions, did not respond to requests for comment.
Meanwhile, Ortona’s opponent for EMSB chair, Katherine Korakakis, who is president of the English Parents’ Committee Association of Quebec, thinks more could have been done at the EMSB to facilitate the process for voters — pointing to the fact that the Lester B. Pearson School Board reported no issues.
“I wasn’t understanding why it was being handled in such a rigid way that wouldn’t allow for maximum participation,” Korakakis said. “If people want to exercise their right to vote, why wouldn’t you make it as easy and as seamless as possible?”
Specifically, Korakakis questioned many of the same things Ortona did: the limited hours, single location and need to show up in person for revisions.
LBPSB, for its part, held revisions at multiple locations and accepted emailed forms right up until the Oct. 15 revisions deadline — though the latter is at odds with the rules, according to Élections Québec.
“I’m not suggesting that we do things that are not legal,” Korakakis said. “What I’m saying is … Why wouldn’t we make it as convenient as possible? Why not have multiple (locations)?”
Asked who imposes rules surrounding locations and hours of revisions sessions, Élections Quebec spokesperson Julie St-Arnaud-Drolet said individual returning officers (who handle the elections) “can establish as many revision commissions as they deem necessary, in several different locations.” Boards of revisers meet “on the days and times fixed by the returning officer,” according to guidelines with minimum requirements.
The elections office at EMSB said it can’t be compared to other school boards since all positions are contested.
“Lester B. Pearson, for instance, has only three contests for commissioners,” it said, adding that it used all available staff for revisions.
“Please note that we can only go on precedent,” it said. “On average, we had 30 people a day coming in. On the final day we announced we would stay open until 10 p.m. Over 300 people turned up and we stayed at the building till 1 a.m. once everything we had was processed.”
Out of the four revisions sessions held at the EMSB, only the evening of Oct. 15 was held outside of typical work hours.
Bluman-Soued ended up going in that night because her mother and husband never appeared on the electoral list despite repeated registration attempts ahead of the deadline.
“But it wasn’t because someone explained it to me,” she said. “I thought maybe we sent the form in and they were still processing it.”
She said she had added phone numbers and emails to the forms, “so if there was a problem, I would have hoped someone would reach out, but there was no information given.”
Messages left with the EMSB also went unanswered, she said.
The elections office said it encountered some issues with registration forms, including duplicates or incomplete information like missing phone numbers. It also said it made efforts to respond to messages.
“We have a small elections team and we have been continually adding more people to help,” it said. “Our team is working around the clock.”
The elections office added that many of the people who showed up on the final night weren’t eligible to vote in Canada or didn’t live on the EMSB’s territory, adding to the traffic.
In addition to long lines, some people reported receiving voter information cards right before or after the revisions deadline, leaving them little or no time to get on the electoral list. The elections office said cards were sent out, but “we cannot vouch for Canada Post efficiency.”
Korakakis, meanwhile, said her team repeatedly asked for better organization from the start.
“We’ve been time and time again told ‘not a lot of people vote, it’s such a low turnout, the government wants to take our school (boards) away because people don’t turn out to vote,’” she said. “Why not make it easy?”