It’s municipal election day in New Brunswick
The polls will open at 10 a.m. on Monday as New Brunswickers begin casting ballots for municipal elections.
If you’ve received your voter information card, it will show where you need to vote today. If it did not arrive in the mail, there are some easy steps to help you find out where you need to vote.
“Visit the Elections New Brunswick website, and there’s a ‘ Where Do I Vote ‘ link, and all you have to do is put in your civic address, and it will tell you where your polling station is. It will also give you information on the contests and candidates that you’ll be voting on. If you don’t have access to a computer, you can call our call centre, 1-888-858-VOTE, and it will be fully staffed today to let people know where they can go vote,” Elections NB Chief Electoral Officer Kim Poffenroth explained.
You’ll also need to bring along a piece of ID or a document that contains your name, address and a signature.
“A driver’s license is the ideal piece of identification because it contains all of those. If you don’t have one, a combination of other documents, such as a New Brunswick Medicare card and a utility bill, phone bill or lease with your name and address on it, will be sufficient. If you don’t have any of those, you can bring someone with you who can vouch for you who votes at the same location as you do,” Poffenroth stressed.
She said a good example of this is a young voter who just turned 18, doesn’t have a driver’s license and lives with their parents. They usually don’t have a utility bill, so if they come to vote with their parents, then the parents can vouch that they do live with them.
New Brunswickers can vote right up until 8 p.m. tonight, but Poffenroth recommends you get there before that.
“If you’re there at 8 p.m., there will be a poll worker at the end of the line, not allowing any more people to get in line. If you could aim for a little bit earlier, so that you know you arrive at your polling station on time.”
All of the ballots will look a bit different, based on how many council members you need to vote for.
“There are a number of contests on these ballots. There are mayors, there are ward councillors, some municipalities have councillors at large, there are elections for both Francophone and Anglophone district education councillors, and in the rural areas, they’re voting for representatives on their rural district advisory committees. In some cases, there are contests in which the candidates have been acclaimed. So no two ballots will necessarily look the same,” Poffenroth explained.
When you receive your ballot at the polling station, you need to colour in the circle next to the names of the individuals you are voting for.
“People should start to see some initial results as early as, I expect, 8:10 pm or 8:15 pm on Monday. We do have some very rural locations, and it may be quite some time before some of those results get transmitted. We do have polling stations in areas that don’t have any cell signal at all. So they will have to return their materials to the returning office before we receive those results. So although there will be some initial results fairly quickly, there will be other results that may be several hours before they’re published on the Elections NB website.” Poffenroth stated.
