Voting day was quiet at several polling stations on Monday, and the process generally went smoothly despite understaffing in some constituencies. Returning officers had to go out of their way to put together their team until the last minute.
“Sunday was a disaster. We had a hard time recruiting. The room supervisors called their team, and the third withdrew,” said Claude d’Anjou, returning officer in Mont-Royal-Outremont. This official, who is in her sixth election, found the situation “very frustrating” and perceived a “lack of civility” from the people who had signed up.
“I walk in a park with my dog and I approach people to ask them if they want to come to work [ce soir] “, added M.me of Anjou, to whom The duty spoke during the day on Monday. There were enough staff to ensure the smooth running of the vote during the day: it rather provided that certain employees of this Montreal riding would have to strip two ballot boxes after the polls closed.
Eleven electoral divisions had to deal with fewer employees than expected to fill the positions of deputy returning officer and officer. In addition to Mont-Royal–Outremont, these are Beauharnois, D’Arcy-McGee, Hull, Huntingdon, L’Assomption, Mégantic, Pontiac, Prévost, Terrebonne and Verdun. In each of these ridings, not all polling places are affected.
In the riding of Verdun, returning officer Benoit Duval was hard at work until 9 p.m. Sunday evening to ensure he had enough staff. His substitute bank was at zero. But he managed to find around 15 people, 382 people being needed to ensure the proper functioning of the vote in the 21 “management places” in the constituency.
“We worked hard,” he said. Why these difficulties? Mr. Duval explained that people were hired, but quit, without it necessarily being related to COVID-19. “There are people who, in the end, did not want to do the training. Or who did not call us back, ”he detailed.
Provincially, the situation was not as critical everywhere. “Over the weekend, things changed a lot, people were hired,” noted Gabriel Sauvé-Lesiège, spokesperson for Elections Quebec, on Monday morning, wanting to be reassuring. The vacancies are mostly substitute positions, he said.
Little wait
Élections Québec reviewed the work of its staff at the start of the day in order to reduce the inconvenience for citizens. Different groups of voters could be grouped together at the same table or at the same ballot box. Some employees have been assigned to new, more essential tasks. And for the first time, the organization called on staff aged 16 and 17.
In Sainte-Foy, for example, it was precisely 16 and 17-year-old teenagers who operated the polling stations at the Collège des Compagnons. They welcomed the citizens, checked the identity of the voters, crossed out their names on the electoral rolls and ensured that the vote was carried out smoothly.
Elections Quebec had been asking for permission to hire employees under the age of 18 for seven years to relieve the scarcity of volunteers, but it was not until last December that an amendment to the Elections Act made their hiring possible.
When passing the To have to in several polling stations Monday during the day and in the evening in Verdun, Outremont, Mile-End, Villeray and Maurice-Richard, the wait was short and the voters circulated smoothly to the polling stations.
Émilie Lanthier, a 30-year-old from the neighborhood, was “eager” to vote in Verdun, where a three-way fight was taking shape between the Liberal Party of Quebec, the Coalition avenir Québec and Québec solidaire. “I feel like a wave of change is brewing. I never win my elections, neither provincially nor federally, so I vote with my heart,” she explained.
“We have seen relentlessness on certain themes that we are tired of hearing about, observed Lorraine Rouisse, an older voter met in front of the Marcel-Giroux community center. While they’re bickering, I didn’t feel like I knew what the important parts of their platform were. So I had to go to their website. »
Catherine Parent-Gibbard was surprised by the lack of waiting at the polling station, unlike the federal elections a year ago. She says she hesitated throughout the campaign before deciding who she was going to vote for. “I knew who I wanted to vote for, but I wondered if I was changing my vote to vote strategically in order to block the CAQ,” she said.
Returning officer Benoit Duval explained that it was rather during the advance poll that the expectation was felt. Twenty-five percent of voters in the riding of Verdun had voted at that time. “People were scrambling at that moment. Election day is quieter,” he said.
Asked by The duty after the closing of the polling stations on the results of the day, Elections Quebec indicated that there was for the moment “nothing to report”, apart from a power outage which affected polling stations in Montreal in the early evening. “The vote was interrupted in two polling places in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce,” said spokesperson Gabriel Sauvé-Lesiège. Voters who were in line before 8 p.m. were able to vote. »
With Sebastien Tanguay