Amherstburg residents will head to the polls and vote in-person during the next municipal election happening Monday, Oct. 26, 2026.
Council adopted administration's recommendation to continue with in-person voting only at a cost of $100,000. The cheapest option.
Other options included a hybrid of in-person, mail-in, online, and telephone.
In a post-2022 election survey, residents overwhelmingly supported continuing future elections in-person, with 72.6 per cent support. Nearly four times more popular than the next option of Internet voting.
Coun. Linden Crain believed the current system was working fine.
"I'm weary of online voting and mail-in ballots. I think we've seen the issue it may present in other municipalities, the cyber security and ensuring that those voting are in fact those registered," Crain said.
Coun. Diane Pouget said based off the 2022 election results, she wanted a hybrid of in-person and online voting.
"We had such poor turnout, and many people with disabilities were not able to attend because of that, and so I would prefer that we endorse both of them with feedback from the public," Pouget said.
Deputy Mayor Chris Gibb thought the option of mail-in voting in inefficient as the town already offers accessible voting options, including in-home voting for persons with disabilities.
"We'd have to mail an individual package to at least, probably more, than 18,653 people. That just seems incredibly inefficient to me, I can't imagine how much that costs, how much recycling that would be, and then people are just going to question the results anyway," Gibb said.
The vote was 5-2 with Coun. Pouget and Coun. Don McArthur opposed.