Third-party review underway as Catholic school board election hits another roadblock

As school board trustees settle into their new roles, one group is still waiting for the election to officially end nearly a month later.

In Cambridge, voters are still casting their ballots after an election emergency halted the City of Cambridge’s Waterloo Catholic District School Board (WCDSB) Trustee Election just days before the election was to be held on Oct. 24.

“On Oct. 22 I declared an emergency under section 53 of the municipal act, to suspend the election,” said Danielle Manton, City Clerk for the City of Cambridge. “It was brought to my attention there were two candidates missing on our ballot, so we suspended the election and made arrangements to resume the election on Nov. 7.”

The City of Cambridge said a third party is currently undertaking a review.

“The review that’s being completed. I would consider it a third-party review, other than being interviewed and looked at our process. I have no influence over what comes out of that review itself,” said Manton.

The error was noticed after 1,700 ballots had already been cast in the advance voting, according to Manton.

Slated to end on Nov. 18, that election is still going after the city extended the voting deadline by an extra week due to another incident with the voting cards.

“On Nov. 7 and 8 we started to receive word that voters weren’t receiving their letters, we understood they were with Canada Post,” said Manton.

While the city says they are doing everything it can to get the vote out this week, others are calling on the city to do more to explain how this happened in the first place.

“When this came up it was two days before the final election day, and I was just astonished that it took this long to figure out there had been elections going on for a couple of weeks already,” said North Dumfries councillor Alida Wilms.

Wilms, a new councillor in North Dumfries township, has sent a letter to the city for an external third-party review.

“I would like to see the ability for the public to provide their input and candidates have the ability to have their say,” said Wilms.

Wilms said the third-party review is a great strategy, but an investigation that is separate from the cities is needed.

“I think that’s a great strategy, I do want something that is separate from the city, to be able to do this investigation I think that’s really important because it really hard to investigate yourself,” Wilms said.

The letter, which was sent to CTV News Kitchener, calls for an investigation into the ballot review process for print and online, the date of when the city first learned of the ballot error and the timeline of when the error was reported to when the city called the emergency order.

“This investigation must also provide an opportunity for voters to come forward and tell their story as to when they noticed the issue with the ballots, and when they informed the city. The report must be publicly available to help restore trust in our local electoral system,” the letter reads.