Sutton resident Michael Herman arrived at the polling station today to discover his name had been stricken from the list.
“You’ve been barré. You’ve already voted,” he was told.
Shocked, Herman insisted he had not voted yet.
“You’re not taking my vote away from me. I’ve never wanted to vote so much in my life,” he said.
Herman said his was not an isolated case. The scrutineers at the station, many of whom are Hermans neighbours, told him others had had the same problem.
Luckily, Herman was eventually allowed to vote and was contacted by an Elections Canada representative later in the day with an explanation. He was told that his polling station had been changed to Brome Village, and a notice had been sent out to him last week. His name had therefor been stricken from the Sutton polling station list, but added to the Brome Village list.
Herman said that he is a Sutton resident and had been voting there since 1968. “All of a sudden they don’t want to take my vote?” he asked.
Herman said because he runs a business, his mail is well taken care of, and he is sure he never received a notification of a polling station change. “If I had, I never would have believed it,” he said, insisting that so close to an election, being advised to go to a polling station in another village would seem outrageous.
“To say i’m suspicious at the moment is an understatement.”
Herman said he heard the same thing had happened to 16 other people in his polling station alone.
“I’d say there have been some irregularities,” Herman said, adding that a friend of his had not received a voter card in the mail.
Herman did give credit to the scrutineers and staff at his polling station who acted quickly.
“They’re mystified,” he said, “This has been happening all day,” they told him.
