'How is that even possible?': N.L. voter receives 3 ballots sent to 3 addresses

A woman in Mainland, on Newfoundland's Port au Port Peninsula, says shereceived three ballots to vote in the provincial election.

Amanda Cornect said Elections NL sentvoting kits with her name on them toher brother's house, to hispost office box and to her former residence in Piccadilly.None of those addresses match the details of her application for a mail-in ballot, she said.

"It's funny because I did have to send two pieces of identification," with the application, Cornect said in an interview Wednesday."So I don't know how they could mix that up. How is that even possible?"

"It's my name, but it's not my current address," she said. "Really, to be honest with you, I don't know if I should vote."

Cornect said she has contacted Progressive Conservative candidate Tony Wakeham, the incumbent MHA in Stephenville-Port au Port, who told her that her name appears twice on the voter's list. Wakeham said he's asked Elections NL to clarify the situation, she said.

"If they can fool up on this, what are they going to do with the election?" Cornect said.

Since in-person voting was cancelled, tens of thousands ofvoters in Newfoundland and Labrador have registered to receive a mail-in ballot.

Cornect isn't the first voter to complain about her ballot being sent to the wrong address. Other havereceived special ballots marked with the wrong district name. In Labrador, candidates and voters have complained voting kits weren't translated to Inuktitut or Innu-aimun.

"I've heard maybe 20 stories like this," said Tony Chadwick, the NDP candidate for Harbour Main. "That's not necessarily a lot, but it says to me that there are problems that should have been foreseen."

Chadwick said to his knowledge, in at least one case, a voter has received a voting kit missing the envelopesrequired to return their ballot.

Cornect's sister, Martina, still hasn't received a mail-in ballot. As the March 25 deadline for Elections NL to receive ballots approaches, she saidshe's worried she won't be able to vote.

"I think it's a big problem. And I don't know how they are going to fix it," Martina said Wednesday.

Likely human error

Elections NL spokesperson Adrienne Luther said Cornect's multiple ballots were likely the result of human error.

"Although we cannot speak to individual examples, we do encourage anyone who received something contrary to what they applied for to contact Elections NL. We can review their application and update elector records, if need be," Luther said.

Luther said Elections NL is aware of "electors receiving multiple voting kits," but added that "the number is minuscule in comparison to the over 150,000 total kits we issued," since January.

Luther said some errors may have occurred when voters had to call more than once to provide proof of residency.

"A special ballot application is meant to update an elector's record, so in most cases there are adjustments to make, telephone numbers to add," she said.

"In some cases, we had people apply online, email us and phone and leave a message requesting a ballot. It would be possible for those three points of contact to be addressed by three different processors here.

"There are numerous possibilities. Processing someone for a special ballot is not as simple as pushing a button," she said.

Luther said that in any event, Elections NL has protocols in place to avoid people voting more than once.

"Special ballots are verified during Part 1 of the counting process. When the declaration envelopes are opened, the ballots are scanned into our system to verify that they were received. If an elector had voted already, it would be picked up at this point in the process," she said.

"We would only ever count one vote per elector," she said.

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