Sudbury woman concerned about election integrity after getting two voter cards

Kelly Perry is happy that she'll be able to vote from the comfort of her own home in Sudbury's municipal election. But she was surprised when two voter information letters — each with a different PIN for casting a vote online — arrived in the mail. 

"One was addressed to Kelly Levesque, which is my maiden name, and the other was addressed to Kelly Perry, which is my married name. So I was a little bit surprised to realize that I could cast two votes," Perry said.

Sudbury is one of five municipalities in northeastern Ontario offering online voting for Monday's election. In Sudbury, voting has already been underway since Oct. 14. 

Perry hasn't voted yet, and will only vote once, but said it's "incredibly concerning" to that mistakes like this could affect election integrity. 

Voter fraud 'very rare' says city clerk 

The City of Greater Sudbury said in a statement that issues with omissions, duplicate or incorrect voter information "are common and historic issues faced in every election," adding that casting a fraudulent or duplicate vote could result in a $25,000 fine or six months in jail. 

The city added that both the online and paper voting systems "have a verifiable audit trail and mechanisms built in to flag if a voter has voted more than once or cast an improper ballot." 

CBC requested an interview with the city clerk to find out more about that system, but he was not available.  

In an interview with Radio Canada earlier this week, Eric Labelle said in each election there are typically one or two issues reported to police for investigation, but fraud is "very rare." 

The city's online voting page states that any duplicate voting cards should be thrown out or returned. 

Perry said she is still in favour of online voting because of the accessibility it provides, and the possibility of boosting participation, but she said her faith in the election results may now be slightly diminished. 

"I do think that we're Canadians and we generally follow the rules, and I think everybody will be well intentioned in doing that, but it certainly raises questions about election integrity. And I don't think there's space for that in our democracy. I think we have to have very very high assurance that one person has one vote," she said.