A Waterloo Region NDP candidate apologized Monday for talking to candidates outside a polling station.
Laura Mae Lindo, who is running in Kitchener Centre, was seen outside an advance voting station at Stanley Park Mall over the weekend. Elections Ontario stipulates that any material identifying a specific candidate or partty is prohibited from being displayed at "the area around" a polling station.
“This was a mistake and I am sincerely sorry,” Lindo said Monday in a statement.
Asked at a campaign event in Guelph if Lindo’s error was a sign of an inexperienced team, NDP leader Andrea Horwath said “excited” would be a more accurate term.
“They’re excited to be able to do everything they can to connect with the people of Ontario,” she said, adding that Lindo had apologized for her presence near the polling station.
While procedure-related complaints have been largely absent from the region’s ridings since the campaign began, a more common election-season issue has surfaced: vandalism of candidates’ signs.
There have been a number of complaints of signs being defaced. Joshua Demers says it happened to his parents, who live in the Waterloo riding.
“Someone had written in black sharpie on our Catherine Fife sign, and someone had taken a Dan Weber sign and put it in through ours,” he said.
“Someone had to go onto the lawn to do it, so there’s a sense of – violation seems too heavy a word, but you feel a bit annoyed.”
Earlier in the campaign, a sign supporting Mary Henein Thorn, the Progressive Conservative candidate for Kitchener Centre, was set on fire. Police in Stratford said Sunday that on election sign in that city was damaged over the weekend.
Anyone caught damaging a sign could face a criminal charge of mischief.
The provincial election takes place June 7.
With reporting by Natalie van Rooy
