Regional chair results delayed to Wednesday, some councillors elected
The Region of Waterloo announced it will not declare official results in the race for regional chair until Wednesday due to "technical difficulties."
The delay is due to voting problems in Cambridge, Woolwich and Wellesley, which prompted the city and townships to extend their poll deadlines.
The city and townships reported problems with the online voting system. Cambridge extended hours at its physical polling stations to 9 p.m.
In Waterloo region, Wellesley and Woolwich have extended the voting period until 8 p.m. Tuesday night.
System 'time outs'
Across Ontario, the online voting network set up by Dominion Voting Systems suffered problems, ultimately affecting 51 communities.
In a statement Monday night, Dominion said the slowdowns were due to its network provider "placing an unauthorized limit on incoming voting traffic that was roughly 1/10th of the system's designated bandwidth.
Unfortunately, the 90-minute slowdown and resulting bandwidth issue caused a varying number of voters to experience slow response times and system time-outs."
Dominion regrets the challenges that our system load issue posed for both election officials and voters alike in today's elections.- Dominion Voting Systems press release
The online voting provider says it resolved the issue by 7:30 p.m., but by then municipalities had decided to extend the voting hours.
Regional chair delay
Current Chair Ken Seiling opted not to run again in this municipal election. He has been the chair since 1985.
Four people were seeking the regional chair spot: Karen Redman, Jay Aissa, Jan d'Ailly and Rob Deutschmann.
In communities where there was little or no delay, clerks have moved to keep secret the votes cast for regional chair and not release them until Tuesday's votes from Woolwich and Wellesley are counted.
Publication of the results may be delayed until Wednesday.
Votes for regional councillors from unaffected voting locales have been counted and announced.
Cambridge
There are two regional council seats in Cambridge plus the mayor.
Incumbents Karl Kiefer took 13,209 votes, and Helen Green Jowett, received 12,801 votes.
Kitchener
There are four regional council seats in Kitchener plus the mayor.
Incumbents Tom Galloway, Elizabeth Clarke and Geoff Lorentz won their seats. Former Kitchener-Conestoga MPP Michael Harris won the fourth seat.
Karen Redman did not seek re-election as she ran for regional chair.
Waterloo
There are two regional council seats in Waterloo plus the mayor.
Jim Erb won a seat with 13,089 votes while incumbent Sean Strickland won the second seat with 10,776 votes.
The other incumbent, Jane Mitchell came in third with 9,472.