A Sackville resident is concerned about the location of the polling station for the municipal election happening on November 28, 2022.
In the past, polling stations for Sackville elections have been held at the Tantramar Veterans Memorial Civic Centre, but for this first election of the new Tantramar council, the main polling station for all advanced and election day polls will be at the Middle Sackville Baptist Church across from Silver Lake. On election day, November 28, there will also be a second polling station at the Dorchester Veterans Community Centre.
Sackvillian Alice Cotton says she and some others she’s spoken to are concerned about the location at the Middle Sackville Baptist Church for two key reasons. The first has to do with the use of a church for the polling station. “The church and the state need to be separate,” says Cotton. “We just would not be voting in a church.”
The other reason has to do with accessibility. “There’s a lot of people on the other side of the highway, ” says Cotton, “who don’t have cars, who can’t make it to that poll easily.”
Cotton points out that many students, who are eligible to register to vote in Tantramar as long as they are ‘ordinarily resident’ in the municipality for at least 40 days, don’t have vehicle access. In central Sackville, it’s viable to live with no vehicle, thanks to the compact nature of the town.
Mount Allison Students’ Union president Rohin Minocha-McKenney says in an emailed statement to CHMA that the decision to move the polling station out of the Civic Centre is “highly concerning.”
“It is key for students’ civic involvement to have a positive voting experience,” says Minocha-McKenney. “This is impossible if students can’t physically access polls, especially students without vehicular transportation.” Minocha-McKenney says the MASU will be reaching out to Elections NB to discuss the situation.
Alice Cotton says she has no doubt the Middle Sackville Baptist Church meets physical accessibility standards such as ramps for wheelchair access. But, “this is a different definition of accessibility,” says Cotton. “For people who have issues of having a car, or bicycle, or the money to pay for a cab, it is not accessible.”
Cotton says there are “other things going on that have made this election difficult for people to grasp,” such as the 260,000 notices mailed out by Elections NB with incorrect information on whether or not people had the responsibility and right to vote. “This doesn’t facilitate things,” says Cotton.
Town of Sackville CAO Jamie Burke says that the Civic Centre is available to Elections NB on Monday November 21 and Monday November 28, though it is not available on Saturday, November 19, when the arena is booked for a Tantramar Regional High School tournament. He says it was an Elections NB decision not to use the Civic Centre for any of the three polling days, despite the availability on two of the days.
Responding via email to an enquiry from CHMA, Elections NB spokesperson Paul Harpelle says, “the returning officer made the decision to use the location he selected, for all three days of voting, rather than confusing electors by jumping around places.”
Cotton doesn’t buy the reasoning to move all voting from the Civic Centre to the church across from Silver Lake. “We’ve had advance polls in other places besides the place where we vote,” says Cotton. “I don’t understand why that posed a problem, and why they came up with the solution they did.”
The returning officer for Tantramar is Paul-Emile Mallet, and his office is in Grand Digue. He also serves as returning officer for Beausoleil, Cap-Acadie, Dieppe, Memramcook, Shediac,
The Southeast rural district, and Strait Shores.
Cotton has written to Chief Electoral Officer Kim Poffenroth and local government minister Daniel Allain to complain about Mallet’s decision, and she’s hoping that with enough complaints registered, there might still be time to relocate the polling stations.
Harpelle says that as of Friday morning, there’s been only one complaint registered with Elections NB.
Harpelle added that, “it is far too late to change, or add any new locations.”
After many calls in to provincial departments, Cotton did get one message back from Elections NB telling her that if she didn’t want to go vote at the Middle Sackville Baptist Church, she could request a mail-in ballot and vote from home.
Information on voting by mail, getting on the voters list, and where and how to vote is on the Elections NB website.
