Cambridge, townships extend voting deadline due to online voting delays

The City of Cambridge as well as the townships of Woolwich and Wellesley have extended the amount of time people will have to cast their ballots in the municipal election due to delays with their online and phone voting systems. 

• Cambridge extended in-person voting until 9 p.m. and online voting until 10 p.m. Monday.
• Wellesley and Woolwich extended the voting an entire day until 8 p.m. Tuesday. 

Dominion Voting System, the municipal voting system used by several townships, is experiencing slowdowns and stoppages.

"It seems to be caused by too many voters entering the system at the same time, and Dominion has increased their capacity, but it's still too slow, which is why we made the decision to extend the voting period," Jeff Smith, deputy clerk with the Township of Woolwich told CBC.

Voters trying to cast a ballot online may have experienced long loading times.

"The Township of Woolwich is working with Dominion to increase the capacity of the system, and additional resources have already been added," the township said in a release. 

The site adds voters must wait a few minutes before casting their ballots again.

The City of Cambridge said voters may be experiencing delays online due to high demand. 

"If you are having difficultly voting online, please head to your designated polling station," the city said in a tweet.

North Dumfries, which also uses online voting, did not extend the voting period. Polls closed at 8 p.m.

Wilmot township officials also did not extend the voting period.

Officials said they would not post the results of their regional chair or school trustee votes until Tuesday at 8 p.m. because polls had been extended in other parts of the Region of Waterloo. 

The Region of Waterloo said on its website that official results would not be declared until Wednesday, Oct. 24, due to extended polling periods in the region.

As a result, the City of Waterloo shut down their election results page entirely, replacing it with a statement that said when all of the election results were in they would post them.

The statement noted that regional chair votes would not be revealed until Wednesday.

The City of Kitchener pulled down Region of Waterloo results at the request of the regional clerk.