TRURO - Electronic voting in the Town of Truro resulted in more than double the amount of people casting a ballot for their favourite candidates compared to the last municipal election.
Jud Pearson, the town's returning officer, said the voter turnout was 46.8 per cent for this election. There were 8,933 eligible voters.
The computer and telephone-based voting system, which excluded paper ballots, was a success compared to 19 per cent turnout in 2008.
"This is the first time Truro has used electronic voting and it's obvious the public embraced it wholeheartedly," said Pearson.
Pearson was pleased that seniors took an interest in the process as well.
"We tripled the number of people in nursing homes who voted compared to the last election."
Pearson added whenever there is a race for mayor, more votes typically come in. Truro Mayor Bill Mills was acclaimed in 2008.
Pearson said another success of electronic voting was that there were no technical issues.
"It was a smooth, seamless process and there was not one technical problem over the 10-day period."
Re-elected Coun. Brian Kinsman said electronic voting was a "great asset" that needs to be implemented again.
"It's something we should be doing in the future. It's the wave of the future," said Kinsman.
He admitted he was initially a little weary of a portion of the population not using technology to vote.
"I had one concern. I was concerned seniors would not vote but I had seniors asking for help on how to vote before election and people in their 90s said they had no problem."
In Stewiacke, voter turnout was 58.54 per cent out of 942 eligible voters. Both paper and electronic ballets were used. During the previous election, which included a race for mayor, the community had more than 70 per cent voter turnout.
The County of Colchester used paper ballots only this year. There were 28,025 eligible voters, with a voter turnout of more than 22 per cent.
mchiasson@trurodaily.com
