A satellite office has opened up in Wallaceburg for Elections Canada in preparation for the upcoming Federal election.
“Our responsibility is to serve electors in this riding,” said former Wallaceburg councillor Sheldon Parsons, who is the additional assistant returning officer in Lambton-Kent-Middlesex. “So we cover electors from Walpole Island down to the outskirts of the city of Chatham and off as far as Bothwell and Croton. We cover a fair amount of the riding. The riding is Lambton-Kent Middlesex so the Lambton-Kent and Chatham-Kent portions are what we cover for serving electors.”
The office is located at 233 Creek St., the former law offices of Tom McGregor.
For August the office is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday to Friday.
Beginning the day after Labour Day, the office hours extend to 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. from Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday.
These hours will continue all the way up to election day on October 19, Parsons said.
“We are trying to get the word out that the office is open and if people have any issues around their listing on the list of electors or whether they are listed, whether they have made a change,” he said. “We can help them make sure that their listing is correct and that they become eligible to vote on the 19th of October.”
Parsons said if people are looking for information on candidates, they have got to go to the website at www.elections.ca which provides the contacts for any registered candidates in the riding.
“Or if they know where their local campaign office is, they should go directly to the campaign offices,” Parsons said. “We provide no information on candidates from this office. We are strictly serving electors and so if anyone needs to confirm they electoral status they can come in, we can look it up in the computer and confirm that or if there are changes or corrections to be made, we can do it right here for them.”
Parsons said there are three opportunities for people to vote.
“The first is on-going and that is voting by special ballot,” he said. “So they can come in at anytime during our office hours and make an application to register to vote by special ballot and then they can vote right then and there if they wish. If they wish to wait until the advanced polls they are going to be the Friday the 9th, Saturday the 10th, Sunday the 11th and Monday the 12th of October or they can vote election day October 19th.”
Parsons said the polls will be spread out through the community of Wallaceburg and throughout this portion of the riding.
“Every elector who is on the preliminary list will get a voter information card and those should be out two weeks in advance to the advanced poll. Late September on a Wednesday, Thursday or Friday they should get a voter information car which will tell them where they vote and tell them where the advance polls are located if they are not able to vote on election day.”
Parsons said there will be jobs available for people on election day as well.
“We hire a lot of people to be DRO’s and poll clerks and if anyone is interested in putting their name in for consideration they can pop in to the office here and we will fill out a form and we will look at their application when we go around to starting to appoint all of those people for that very important election day,” Parsons said.
“We are looking at hiring about 200 to 250 people.”
For more information, people can call the office at 519-627-3561.
