Bradford: Polling station not adequate

Letter to Simcoe.com November 4 2010
Re: Council must engage public to raise voter turnout, Oct. 28
First, I am a constant reader of your editorial.
I am a new resident to Bradford. I have lived here just a year. I moved here from Newmarket.
I am not using this medium to make comments on the candidates themselves or their campaigns, but the voting process.
I first must add that I’m 36 years old and I’ve never missed an opportunity to vote since I turned 18.
I was appalled this time at the placement of my polling station in Bradford District High School.
I arrived after work at 7:30 p.m. at the polling station to a pitch black, muddy parking lot, to enter a side entrance that I would swear was lit up by a 40-watt bulb.
Signage as to where the polling station was located was also almost non-existent.
If I was a first-time voter or one of those too-busy-to-bother voters, I would have just driven away saying to myself, “If they can’t pick a better locale for this, I care about voting as much as they care about accepting my vote”.
Maybe a polling station should be set up in one of the Tim Horton’s locations and I could have voted at the drive-through and received a double double in the process.
Jason Dykeman
Bradford