While the sign at the corner of Hunter and Winston Roads asks “Are You On The Voter List?”, it sure seems like the Town doesn’t want you to be…. or at least is not expending any effort to ensure you can use their portal.
If you attempt to follow the website link as per the sign, you are taken to a lovely 404 “Not Found” page, as below:
EDIT: The Town IT has fixed the link after we published this post, but it is still insecure (see below).
This issue was raised to Town Officials almost a week ago, and so far there has been no fix. This would take the average “IT guy/gal” 5 to 10 minutes to fix, but so far the the “error” has gone uncorrected.
If you drill down through the Town’s website you can eventually find the “Voter Registration Portal” at:
hxxp://www.grimsby.ca/Elections/voter-registration.html
We put “hxxp” in the that URL on purpose and for a good reason… to prevent people from possibly compromising their personal information. By default the Voter Registration Portal on the Town site is not using an encrypted connection, so any personal information you transmit to the page is viewable and can be intercepted by intermediate networks.
The Town site does have an encryption (SSL) certificate, so why the site does not redirect you to a secure and encrypted form is a further head scratcher. If you need to use the portal, please use:
https://www.grimsby.ca/Elections/voter-registration.html
With a Director of IT who is paid VERY handsomely, you would think they could take 5 minutes of their time to fix the re-directs and ensure that a secure form is used. But it appears maintaining integrity in an election falls somewhere down the IT priority list with cleaning keyboards and mice with canned air.
Despite the amateur implementation of the portal, we advise everyone to check their registration using the secure “https” link above. There are unconfirmed and anecdotal reports of some long-time Grimsby residents not appearing on the list.
Back to the sign, it’s in the Winston Road Neighbourhood near the Lakehouse development that has a very large influx of new and probably unregistered voters. While not on the same level or intent of the 2011 “robocall” scandal directing voters to wrong polls, the net result is the same… voters are left confused and frustrated.
It’s clearly irresponsible to have left these issues untouched for so long. This is just another question on how well the municipal election is being run… and we certainly have more to post about.