| April 20, 2006 Volume 46 Edition No. 23 |
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Vote by mail approved for municipal elections
by Cheryl Hardcastle |
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Tecumseh Council has authorized using vote by mail as an alternative voting method for the 2006 municipal elections scheduled to take place on November 13, this year. “Voting by Mail” entails providing a Vote by Mail Kit to every elector in the municipality. The kit consists of a voting instruction sheet, a composite ballot, an inner ballot envelope coded with the Ward, a security slip and an outer return envelope. Completed ballots may be returned to the Ballot Return Station at Tecumseh Town Hall via Canada Post, or may be delivered directly rather than forwarding by mail. Completed ballots must be deposited at the Ballot Return Station at Town Hall on or before 8:00 p.m. on Voting Day ( November 13) which is ballot counting day. In adopting this method of voting by mail,, there are no proxy voting provisions or advance voting provisions for the municipal election. Tecumseh first introduced the Vote by Mail method for the 2003 municipal election. In 2003, with the Vote by Mail method, Tecumseh saw a voter turn out of 54.5%, as compared to a 45.6% voter turn out in 2000 when traditional polling stations were still in use. Notable in 2003 was the fact that some electors erroneously believed that Vote by Mail was an option and they could still attend a poll station to vote. These electors discarded their voters’ kits that arrived in the mail in October of 2003 and were issued a new kit when they showed up to vote at Town Hall on Voting Day that year. Voters fill out a voter return slip that is inserted in the outer envelope and their names are marked off on the voters list when their envelope is received at the Ballot Return Station, much the way a Poll Clerk crosses names off as people come to a polling station to vote. Their inner envelope containing the ballot is then placed in the ballot box for counting on Voting Day. This year being the second time the Town uses the Vote by Mail method, there should be less confusion when voters’ kits are provided this October. Ballot counting proved time consuming in 2003 with Vote by Mail, and so being introduced this year is the use of optical scanning vote tabulators for the purpose of counting the votes. Tecumseh Council passed the by-laws reflecting these 2006 municipal election voting procedures at their regular council meeting on April 11, 2006. The Town of Tecumseh has budgeted $20,000 for the 2006 municipal election.
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