Carry on voting (updated) – BWG, Collingwood, Innisfil, Oro-Medonte, Penetanguishene, Springwater and others extend voting to 8 pm on October 23

51 municipalities across Ontario reported to have extended election by a day

AWARE Simcoe note: Voters, check how candidates have responded to questions from AWARE Simcoe. To find their responses, go to: Candidates / Election 2018 on the menu bar and click on the required municipality. Then open the post titled “(Municipality) Candidates – Municipal Elections 2018” for that municipality. Links to candidates’ answers are provided next to their names on the list for each municipality.

AWARE News Network

Several Simcoe County municipalities and as many as a total of 51 across the province have extended the election for a day because of delays in online voting on Monday.

Voters have until 8 p.m. on Oct. 23 to cast their ballot in Bradford-West-Gwillimbury, Collingwood, Oro-Medonte, Penetanguishene, Innisfil, and Springwater Township.

Other affected include Sudbury and Gravenhurst.

It appears all affected municipalities used Dominion Voting Systems to provide online and telephone voting.

The Toronto company said in a release that its internet colocation provider was responsible.

“Dominion regrets the challenges that our load system issue posed for both election officials and voters alike in (Monday’s) elections

“We appreciate the public’s patience in resolving this matter.

“We want to assure Ontario voters that we will work to ensure this problem does not occur in future elections. It is important to note that at no time was the integrity of the system at risk of compromise, or in any way insecure.”

Dominion Voting Systems said 51 Ontario municipalities were using its portal to conduct their elections, but just after 6 p.m., traffic began to slow down.

The company said the  Toronto internet colocation provider had placed an “unauthorized” limit on incoming voting traffic that was a tenth of the system’s bandwidth.

Dominion Voting Systems said its staff had the problem fixed by 7:30 p.m. “Unfortunately, the 90-minute slow down and resulting bandwidth issue caused a varying number of voters to experience slow response times and system time-outs.”