Heather Wright/The Independent

Plympton-Wyoming may be the next municipality to got to online voting only in the 2026 municipal election.

In 2018, the town moved away from paper ballots to online method but also included telephone voting at the time.

Clerk Erin Kwarciak, in a report to council, said it was confusing and left the public frustrated. In the lead up to the 2022 election, administrators suggested dropping telephone voting, but council declined.

In 2022, 18 per cent of the voters used the telephone poll. But Kwarciak said the “elections were not as user friendly as anticipated, causing confusion” and proving to be “more troublesome” leading to people voting online instead.

The town is about to get pricing for the 2026 vote, and Kwarciak is again asking to hang up on telephone voting. Councillor Bob Woolvett was opposed to the idea noting the number of people using the telephone is “a significant amount of votes.

“We’re sitting here wanting to go totally computer; that will certainly encourage a percentage of people just not to bother,” he said, noting in the US, there is a movement to go back to paper ballots.

But Councillor Alex Boughen, agreed “the telephone (voting) really sucks because you sit there and listen to the robot talk for 25 minutes and they you forget what they said to do.”

While he doesn’t like the system, he still wanted the municipality to price out the option.

But Councillor John Van Klaveren, who runs an online business, says it is time for Plympton-Wyoming to take the leap.

“If the phone’s no longer available, they will figure it out.

“And if they don’t know how to figure it out, they’ll call someone…you got to give them that opportunity to figure it out. It’s not disrespectful, it’s not cutting service; it’s just moving along with technology streamlining, making things more efficient.”

Council asked staff to move ahead with the request for proposals for a voting system which would include a cost for phone voting with the possibility the option is removed later.

There will a polling station available at the municipal office.