Online voters in Peterborough grappled with slow, dropped connections on voting day

Peterborough city staff first noticed Monday afternoon that online voting had slowed to a crawl.

Then, the phone calls began coming in.

“We were noticing through calls we were receiving on our election hotline that some people were experiencing trouble with internet voting,” said city clerk John Kennedy.

It wasn’t just Peterborough. On Monday, which was civic election day across the province, 51 municipalities across Ontario using the Dominion Voting system noticed a delay in online and phone voting, an issue the company later attributed to an unauthorized cap on its broadband, which caused online voting to slow to a crawl.

READ MORE: Online voting in 51 Ontario municipalities marred by election-day ‘system load issue’

“We were looking at any stats we had available to us to understand the magnitude of the issue, and of course, as we approached 7 p.m., we knew that was a milestone timeline because it was the cutoff for voter registration.”

With voting scheduled to end at 8 p.m., Peterborough officials made the decision to extend voting by one hour.

“We did check in with our polls and found that people who were having trouble internet voting were attending the walk-in polls,” Kennedy said.

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The problem was resolved by about 7:30 p.m. According to Kennedy, roughly 200 more people were able to vote online after extending the voting hours, and a further 1,000 people left their computers to cast a ballot at one of the city’s 17 polling stations.

“It gave us some level of confidence that the message was getting out and people were able to vote.”

But in the City of Kawartha Lakes, delays proved to be so significant that officials opted to extend voting by a full 24 hours.

“Votes were still coming through, but unfortunately, with so many people trying to cast their ballots, it has slowed down,” said city spokesperson Maria Evans. “We wanted to allow 24 hours — ample time for the public to be able to cast their votes.”

READ MORE: Voting times extended in several Ontario municipalities due to online voting glitches

Kennedy says city officials will discuss the issue with Dominion Voting during an upcoming debriefing session. But he says that’s why it’s always good to have a Plan B.

“You plan as best you can and you make sure you have backup plans when these things occur to mitigate these issues as best as possible,” Kennedy said.