At least one North Shore municipality made an early formal decision to run upcoming municipal election voting entirely online. At a January 22, 2025 Council meeting, the Township of Sables-Spanish Rivers (SSR) passed a resolution to…
approve Internet Voting as an alternative voting method for the 2026 Municipal and School Board Election; AND FURTHER THAT staff be directed to bring a by-law forward to Council to establish alternative voting methods and to permit advance voting.
Further to that decision, a cooperative Request For Proposals was filed later in 2025 by SSR, Blind River, Huron Shores, Baldwin and Elliot Lake to find a reputable and affordable online voting supplier.
While this means many eligible voters across the North Shore will have the convenience of voting from home, in advance and at a time of their choosing, it does not mean only those with personal internet access and/or skills can vote. As SSR Township Clerk-Administrator Anne Whalen explained at the 2025 meeting, in-person voting stations would be established at the Town Office in Massey and at public libraries throughout the township, and staff would be available to help with the voting process.
Telephone voting was also offered in the last election (2022). It was reported that many voters had difficulty with that system since it required careful attendance to a menu of names and positions. Online and telephone voting were the only two options in 2022, and there has been no official suggestion that a lack of paper ballots affected the vote count.
This decision has recently come back to light on a local online residents’ forum, with some expressing concern that paper ballots would not be available this year. It is unclear why, exactly, a paper ballot system in conjunction with an online system is preferred, but some comments on the forum raise concerns about online voting security and lack of scrutineering for online votes.
There is no evidence that past online voting in Ontario has suffered from security or vote-integrity problems. Some Ontario voters all the way back in 2018 reported internet slowdowns when trying to vote, but this does not appear to have affected results. Many smaller municipalities continue to find paper ballots to be the more affordable option. Thessalon, for instance, looks to be only voting on paper this year.
Still, some SSR online forum comments imply voters are being denied a necessary choice in their voting method. And one of the comments is from a surprising source — Sables-Spanish Rivers mayoral candidate Mike Mercieca, who writes “…we definitely need a paper ballot system.”
Mercieca was a sitting Councillor when the 2025 vote was taken to use online voting as the alternative system for 2026, and is not recorded as having voted against the resolution when it was passed by Council. During the meeting, Mercieca did ask a question about absentee voters having access to a ballot, but seemed satisfied with the information that online voting provided an efficient solution to that problem.
Registration for candidacy in the upcoming SSR election closes in late August, and so far sitting Mayor Kevin Burke has not indicated he intends to stand again for his seat. Mercieca is opposed by former Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing Member of Parliament Brent St. Denis, who served the region as part of successive Jean Chretien governments.
This is shaping up to be a heavyweight competition, since Councillor Mercieca received the most votes of any SSR Councillor in the 2022 election. For his part, St. Denis served the North Shore for 15 years in Parliament, and has an extensive CV of executive and administrative experience. Should Mayor Burke decide on a last-minute entry, the mayoralty of Spanish-Sables River might become a fierce three-way battle.
In late 2024, Sudbury City Council approved a variety of voting methods for the 2026 municipal election, but with the understanding that secure online voting is greatly preferred by the city’s active voters. Fully 75% of the ballots counted during Sudbury’s 2022 municipal and school board elections were cast through online voting, and 53% of those occurred during the advance voting period.
Sault Ste. Marie, on the other hand, decided in late 2024 to conduct the upcoming election only by paper ballot and in-person tabulation. Advance voting and in-home voting are available to Soo residents, but not online.
Shore Report acknowledges the North Shore of Lake Huron is the traditional land of the Anishinabek and the Métis Nation. This is Treaty 61 (Robinson-Huron) territory. Anishinabek have lived in the Great Lakes region for thousands of years. Shore Report is very grateful to live and work here.
All written content in this issue is © Shore Report 2026
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