Municipal election nominations close today. Here's what Windsor candidates, voters need to know

With two months to go before the municipal election in Windsor, preparations are well underway.

In fact, if you're one of the more than 150,000 people in Windsor eligible to vote on Oct. 24, a ballot has already been ordered for you, according to Terri Knight Lepain, the city's manager of records and elections.

Friday afternoon is the deadline for candidates to submit their nomination paperwork.

Knight Lepain joined CBC Radio's Windsor Morning to give an update on the election and explain some things voters and candidates need to know.

LISTEN: Terri Knight Lepain joins Windsor Morning

The following interview has been condensed and edited for clarity:

Windsor Morning host Nav Nanwa: People have until to this afternoon to register to run for office. What should people know if they want to register? 

Terri Knight Lepain: So, people should know that we are very busy today. We are double booked with appointments, but we certainly don't want that to discourage folks if they are interested in running to come down and file their paperwork.

There is lots of room in all of the races for school board trustee, for those four local school boards, 10 ward councillor positions and then, of course, the position of mayor. If they do come, the deadline is 2 p.m.. 

There is the requirement that you have 25 endorsement signatures. So, if I have one piece of advice for anyone coming [today] for mayor or councillor, it would be come with more than 25 signatures.

Even if you think the signatures are complete, there's a process we go through to verify them with the person that's endorsing that is not a resident of Windsor and can't accept the signature of the person. 

Other than that, they need photo I.D. and they need the filing fee. For councillor and school board trustee [it] is $100 and for mayor is $200 and we accept cash, debit or credit. 

Q: When it comes to running in a particular ward, what requirements do candidates have to meet? Do they have to live there, work there, have a business there? 

A: No, so essentially in order to run in one of the races for the city of Windsor for councillor or mayor — the rules for school board trustee are a little bit different — you just have to be an eligible elector in the city of Windsor.

So that means that you are over the age of 18, you are a Canadian citizen and you are the owner or tenant of land in the city of Windsor or the spouse of such owner or or tenant of land.

So, a lot of candidates seem to run in the ward where they live or where they work. They have that connection to the world. They know their neighbours. They know the patrons of their business, that type of thing.

But certainly, you know, if you live on the east end and you own a business downtown and the downtown resonates with you, you can certainly run in Ward 3. There there is no requirement that you live in the world that you run in. 

Q: Switching gears to the actual voting for this upcoming election, there's been a very low voter turnout for municipal elections here in the city. What is the city doing to get more citizens to cast a ballot? 

A: We're planning the election and I've ordered a ballot for every single eligible elector in the city. So, we've ordered in excess of 150,000 ballots. So we're hopeful that everybody comes out. We recognize that, you know, there are some challenges to getting voters to the polls.

So, one thing we are doing is we are offering free transit on all of our advanced voting days and on election day, Oct. 24.

So all the voter has to do is show their voter notification card, which they will get in the mail on the last week of September [or] in the first week of October, to the transit operator and they can ride to and from the polls for free.

If they don't have a voter notification card, if they've moved and it didn't come in the mail, that type of thing. They can simply tell the transit operator, 'hey, I'm going to vote' and they won't have to pay the fare there and back.

So that's one thing we're encouraging. We've really taken a look at the voting locations that we've used in the past...and so what we're doing and we're hoping today to finalize those voting locations, and to release the updated maps on our website.

We have 10 wards within the city of Windsor and each ward is divided into almost like a smaller ward. We call it a voting subdivision. And historically, there has been a voting location in each voting subdivision within each ward, and so we've returned to that model similar to we as to what we did in 2018.

Some of the voting subdivisions will be shared amongst one physical location and so we've looked for a bigger location to service two voting subdivisions. Each voting subdivision will be a separate poll, but it's a large facility. There's good parking, it's accessible. Also, with regards to the voting locations or the polling stations, we've really taken a look at what has worked previously for Windsor elections.

Q: Diwali is also on [election day]. Is there has there been any considerations made on possibly trying to make voting more accessible for anyone who is celebrating Diwali? 

A: Yeah, absolutely. So the voting day is set by the province, so that sort of outside the realm of the city of Windsor. So we recognize that there is that that holiday and some people will be celebrating.

We are offering eight days of advance voting. So if somebody isn't able to attend the poll on election day they're certainly welcome to attend any of our advanced voting days.

We'll be offering advanced voting on Wednesday, Oct. 5, at the Capri Pizzeria Recreation Complex in south Windsor.

On Saturday, Oct. 8, and Sunday, Oct. 9, we will be offering drive-thru voting at Mic Mac Park on the west end.

On Tuesday, Oct. 11, we'll be at All Saints Church downtown, and on Wednesday, Oct. 12 we'll be at Most Precious Blood Parish.

And then on Friday, Oct.14, Saturday, Oct.15, and Sunday, Oct. 16, we will be offering drive-thru voting at the WFCU Centre.

So yeah, if somebody can't attend on voting day because you know, they have work commitments or other celebratory commitments, we encourage them to attend one of our advance voting days. And you can vote anywhere in the city on advanced voting day.