5,400 Guelph residents vote in advance polls

Election day in Guelph is less than a week away, but over 5,400 residents already cast their ballots through advanced voting on the weekend.

That’s about six per cent of eligible voters in the city voting over the three-day period, according to city clerk Stephen O’Brien.

In an interview on Tuesday, O’Brien said it’s difficult to compare things to the previous election in 2014 because Guelph had online voting and residents had more time to take advantage of advanced voting.

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“We actually had five days of in-person advanced voting but overlayed and running concurrently over those five days were 17 days of online voting that was offered during the advanced voting period as well,” he explained.

There were just under 3,000 people who voted at the in-person advanced voting locations and almost 13,000 people voted online before election day in 2014, according to O’Brien.

There are about 89,000 voters in Guelph this year and that number will probably rise ahead of Oct. 22, but O’Brien said they always plan to have 100 per cent turnout.

In 2014, the turnout was 43 per cent.

“We try and factor in what the flow will be like on election day, but it is a very inexact process,” O’Brien said. “We do prep to have everybody come out and vote.”

Polls will close at 8 p.m. on Monday and O’Brien is urging voters to get to their voting station early.