'Human error' and high traffic cause problems on election day in Nova Scotia

Tuesday was election day in Nova Scotia, but not everything went according to plan.

Elections Nova Scotia says “human error” is to blame for a delayed opening at one polling station in Mushaboom, N.S., Tuesday morning, which will cause the results to be delayed an hour Tuesday night.

Naomi Shelton, a spokesperson for Elections Nova Scotia, says workers at Electoral District 22 Eastern Shore forgot some supplies at the returning office, so they had to go back and get them before opening the polling station in Mushaboom Tuesday morning.

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Polling stations across the province opened at 8 a.m. on election day, but the Mushaboom location wasn’t able to open until 9 a.m. As a result, the polling station will remain open for voting until 9 p.m.

“There’s always room for some human error, and we certainly don’t want voters in any electoral district to be negatively impacted when there’s a delayed opening, so we usually offer a comparable amount of time on the other end of the day to vote,” said Shelton.

All other voting locations will close at 8 p.m. However, anyone who is still in line at 8 p.m. will still be able to vote.

Elections Nova Scotia says it can only release the results once all polls are closed, so results won’t come out until the Mushaboom location closes at 9 p.m. – an hour later than planned.

“That is standard practice for us so that we’re not releasing results while active voting is still taking place so that it can’t influence those voter decisions,” explained Shelton.

That wasn’t the only snag on election day.

Elections Nova Scotia also had issues with its public call centre and website Tuesday morning due to the high number of people trying to get through.

Shelton said roughly 6,000 calls came into the call centre before 10 a.m. Tuesday. 

“We experienced some higher volumes of calls at the call centre, as well as high traffic volume on our website, so our website actually did crash and was unavailable for just under an hour,” she said.

“During that time, we worked with the provincial IT services to up the capacity of the website, as well we also worked with our call centre provider to increase the number of lines available.”

Shelton said Elections Nova Scotia increased the capacity of its website and added extra operators to its call centre in anticipation of higher traffic on election day, but the numbers were even higher than expected.

“So, it’s an issue that we anticipated, but not the last-minute surge that we had today in terms of that rush period,” she said.

The election campaign wrapped up Monday almost a month after Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Houston called the early election on Oct. 27.

Houston is seeking a second term as premier.

Zach Churchill led the Liberals during this election, while Claudia Chender led the NDP.

For more Nova Scotia election news, visit our dedicated page.