Unable to vote: Quebecers ‘shocked’, ‘astounded’ after being turned away at polling station
Posted October 7, 2022 12:09 pm.
Last Updated October 7, 2022 7:11 pm.
Montrealer Lucy Saunders has been voting in Canadian elections since she became a citizen in 2007. On Oct. 3, for the first time ever, she was denied that duty in the Quebec election because she wasn’t on the electoral list.
“I was really shocked to be turned away and told that I wasn’t allowed to vote,” she said.
Saunders and her family had moved neighbourhoods the month prior and she thought she did what she needed to do by changing her address in the online government portal. She was told the change could take two weeks, thinking she’d be fine in time for the election.
Lucy Saunders has been voting in Canadian elections since she became a citizen in 2007. (Credit: Lucy Saunders / handout)
On election night, she showed up at her Ville-Emard polling station, only to be told she couldn’t exercise her right.
“It’s our due diligence and I was really looking forward to go there. I feel like a sense of pride, you know, going to to cast my vote,” she said. “I tell my kids, it’s the election and yeah, Mommy’s going to vote and how important it is, and so to be turned away and tell my kids that I couldn’t vote, and they said, ‘Why?'”
RELATED: Groups, parties demand electoral reform following Quebec’s ‘distorted’ election results
For Saunders, it wasn’t just a one-off. She was told by Elections Quebec workers on-site that this had happened to several people that and it can sometimes take up to six months for the address change to kick in.
“My boyfriend, who works in a small office with four people that had moved in the last few months were also turned away and could not vote.”
#WATCH: “I was really shocked to be turned away,” says Montrealer Lucy Saunders, on being denied the right to vote at a polling station on election night. She says she changed address last month and thought she would be fine in time to vote.
READ: https://t.co/3xlqEath53 pic.twitter.com/idaf6A99yu
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Saunders says the delay in the changes to an address is unacceptable.
“I was really astounded and shocked that the technology is there to be able to count the votes and call the result in 10 minutes, but it can take Elections Quebec up to six months to recognize the change of addresses for potentially thousands of Quebecers,” she said. “It was very frustrating.”
“We maybe did our change of address a little too late, which was beginning of September, so it shouldn’t be,” said Montrealer Jesse Courchesne. “But just because of that, it’s enough for us to not be allowed to vote, which we felt was extremely disappointing and just anti-democratic.
Courchesne, frustrated after being denied at a polling station, took to Instagram with his story. He said Elections Quebec was of no help and it was actually a political party that stepped in.
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“They could actually direct us to the proper location with where we could vote and then we ended up voting maybe three or four minutes before 8:00 p.m.,” he said.
“I was shocked that he actually told me, ‘you can’t vote,'” said Yasmeen Khan from Laval. “They couldn’t find my name or my address on the paper, so I showed my driver’s license again. They said there was nothing they could do. That my name was not on it and to go home.”
She decided go back to the polling station later, this time with her voter card. Her name was suddenly found on the list. She says every vote in her riding counted.
“The difference between the person who won and the runner up, it’s a difference of something like 400 votes, which is insane,” she said. “I think if I was turned away, how many other people were also turned away?”
Elections Quebec tells CityNews that every election they see cases of electors not checking their registration.
In a statement they say: “There are no more cases than usual this year and we have not encountered any problems during the extraction of the electoral list or during the revision of the list. […] Changes of address are processed very quickly, it is not true that it can take up to six months. Electors who were unable to vote had the opportunity to complete a form, at the polling place, so that their case could be examined and their registration on the electoral list could be carried out.”
“We are obviously disappointed when voters cannot vote because they are not registered on the list of electors. Anyone in this situation can contact us to understand why they were not on the list. Voters should also keep in mind that it is important to verify their registration on the voters list at each election.”
“I do agree that it’s everyone’s responsibility to try to work out where they should vote, but it’s also their responsibility to make sure that every citizens are being given the right information and the right resources to be able to vote,” Courchesne said.
For those like Saunders, they’ll have to wait until 2026 to have their say.
“Every election is important,” she said. “But for me, this one more so than any of the other ones.”
“If there is a possibility that something went wrong here, I think it’s very important to find out what that was, who is in charge, and for somebody to take accountability because it can’t happen again,” said Khan.
