Elections P.E.I. facing challenges finding enough staff, voting locations

Elections P.E.I. says it's facing challenges hiring enough polling staff and booking polling locations for the upcoming provincial elections.

On Tuesday it was announced that April 23 would be the day Islanders head to the polls to vote for district representatives and in the referendum on electoral reform.

That's left Elections P.E.I. just 28 days to hirea team of about2,000 people, whichTim Garrity, Elections P.E.I. chief electoral officer,said is a challenge.

According to the ElectionAct, there needto be two confirmation officers per poll. There are 237 polls across P.E.I.

Elections P.E.I. needs about 500 people to go door-to-doorbutGarrity said organizing those people was difficult to do before the writ was dropped.

"We would contact people and say 'are you available for work?' and they would ask us when and we couldn't give them a date so it was challenging," he said.

700 people as of Thursday

Garrity said Elections P.E.I. has cast a wide net to find workers. As of Thursday, it's found 700 people to work the elections.

"There are places where we're a little bit short but we're actively working on making sure we have enough people to fully get the confirmation done and I'm confident that we will be able to do it," Garrity said.

"The process will go on. We just have to make a few adaptations as necessary."

Those adaptationscould include confirmation officers working multiple polling locations, or working alone instead of as part of a pair.

Still looking for people, locations

Garrity said there's also been challenges booking polling locations because up until Tuesday, Elections P.E.I. didn't have an official date for the election. Certain locations have already been booked or they may have changed due to redrawn boundary lines.

"There may be a change in the voting locations. There's a couple reasons for that. The boundaries have changed in a number of the districts so there will be a change for some people," Garrity said.

"There are some significantchanges to the boundariesfrom the last provincial election. As wellwemay not be able to get some of the same locations that we had in the past."

He said a couple of venues Elections P.E.I. has used in Charlottetown in the past the Eastlink Centre and Murphy's Community Centre are unavailable.

Returning officers went out Wednesday to look for locations across P.E.I., Garrity said.

Garrity said if people are interested in working the elections, there are still plenty of opportunities available.

Elections P.E.I. is still accepting names for clerks, officers, and counters for election night to help count the referendum ballot.

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