CBRM advance voting jumps with piggyback poll

It seems people in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality know how to kill two votes with one drive.

An advance poll for municipal and school board elections in Nova Scotia was held Tuesday, the same day as the federal election.

Bernie White, returning officer for the CBRM, said municipal election officials were caught off guard by the rush of people casting a ballotahead of Saturday's vote.

"People were saying that while we're out that they would go and vote municipally as well, which really taxed our people,"he said. "We anticipated an increase, but certainly not the surge that we got."

There were different polling stations for the two elections. While the polls opened for the federal election at8:30 a.m., people had to wait until noon to cast a ballot in the municipal election.

White saidabout 10 per cent of eligible voters have turned out for advance polls since 1995.

But that number climbed to as high as 25 per cent Tuesday in some areas of the CBRM, he said.

In the Municipality of the County of Inverness, turnout was double that of the advance pollsfor the last municipal election in 2004, according to election officials there.

Richmond and Victoria counties also reported higher than usual numbers.