Hospitalized woman furious at inability to vote on election day

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This article was published 16/10/2015 (3672 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In an election where every vote counts, a Winnipeg woman who is a patient at St. Boniface Hospital is furious after learning she has no options for casting her ballot Monday.

Shawna Forester Smith has been in the hospital for 31 days and is currently awaiting surgery.

An active citizen, the 32-year-old has always voted after being taught by her parents, “No vote, no bitch.”

“I am so disappointed that I don’t get to exercise my right to vote just because I am sick,” she told the Free Press Friday. “Prisoners get better treatment.”

With the election around the corner, Smith began inquiring about voting weeks ago, asking staff members and her fellow patients if they knew how the patients could vote. She received no answers.

She was able to get in touch with Elections Canada officials last week, who told her she missed her chance at the advance mobile polls, and if she wants to vote Monday, she has to go to her riding on Waverley Street — something she physically cannot do.

“I want to vote, and I can’t,” she said.

Smith was infuriated when she found out the hospital held mobile polls last weekend, but no one told her or her roommate, Rob Malanczuk.

“No one knew it was going on; there was no advertising, no posters,” she said, adding she spoke with multiple patients who had no idea there was a polling station at the hospital over the Thanksgiving weekend. “None of the staff knew what was going on.”

Officials with the hospital, which has an average of about 400 patients staying at the hospital on any given day, said patients were given a notice with their lunch tray last Saturday, to inform them there would be a special polling station at the hospital for three days over the Thanksgiving weekend, and any patients requiring assistance could call a number to get a volunteer to assist them.

However, Smith and Malanczuk, who are staying in the medical wing, say they never saw those notices and had no idea until it was too late.

St. Boniface Hospital spokesman Don Goulet described it as “unfortunate” patients were unaware of the polling station.

“The sheets would have gone on all patient trays except the ones for patients in intensive care,” Goulet said, adding they let staff know through a newsletter patients could vote during that period. “Did patients look at them? I am not necessarily sure.”

The voting was only open for patients, so Goulet said a notice in the patients’ lunch trays was seen as the most effective way to spread the information.

“I want to vote, and I can’t”
– Shawna Forester Smith

“Putting posters up, we have 500 beds, so where would you put them? On each of the 500 doors?” Goulet said.

According to Elections Canada, they work to accommodate voters who live in hospitals and long-term care facilities through mobile polling stations at their residence during the election. If required, they will take a ballot box from bed to bed to accommodate those who are bedridden.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority estimates there are about 1,900 patients in acute-care beds on any given day across hospitals in the region.

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A spokeswoman for the WRHA said each hospital across the region works with Elections Canada to accommodate voters wishing to cast their ballots under Elections Canada’s special voting rules.

“This includes advance polls and secret enveloped ballots for patients who are bedridden,” said Bronwyn Penner-Holigroski in an email.

However, under the Canada Elections Act, once it hits 6 p.m. on the sixth day before election day — which was on Wednesday — all options, including mail-in ballots, for voting outside a prescribed polling station are gone.

“Elections Canada basically said there is nothing they can do,” Smith said. “They said I’d have to go and vote in my riding area, which is at a mosque on Waverley Street, but I am too sick to make the car ride there or get a pass to go and vote.”

kristin.annable@freepress.mb.ca