Update

Online voting in 2026: how Cochrane decided, and how common it is

Published August 31, 2026

A few residents have asked me about voting this October, and specifically about the fact that there will not be a paper ballot. It is a fair thing to ask about, and the honest answer is that the change is real but it is not unusual. Roughly half of Ontario’s municipalities are doing the same thing this year.

This post is not an argument for or against online voting. It is a reference. I have set out what Council actually decided and when, with links to the original documents, and then put Cochrane beside every other municipality in the province so you can see where we sit. Read whichever part is useful to you.

The short version

Cochrane’s municipal and school board election is Monday, October 26, 2026. Voting will be by internet or telephone. There will be no paper ballot and no polling station, and proxy voting is not available under this method.

This is not a brand new system for the Town. Cochrane has offered internet and telephone voting since the 2018 election, alongside paper. What changes in 2026 is that the paper option is gone. The vendor running the system, Intelivote Systems Inc. of Nova Scotia, is the same company that ran Cochrane’s 2022 election.

Every eligible elector receives a voter information letter in the mail with a personal identification number. The telephone option exists precisely for people who do not use the internet or would rather not: you call the number in your letter and vote using the keypad, with no computer involved. It works on a landline. And if you would rather have someone sit with you while you do it, there are two staffed Help Centres in town, plus at-home assistance for people who cannot get to one.

Dates, help centres and the voters’ list

All of this comes from the Town’s Municipal Elections page, which is the authoritative source. If anything below has changed since I wrote it, believe the Town and not me.

Voting period. Voting opens at 9:00 a.m. on Friday, October 16, 2026, and stays open 24 hours a day until 8:00 p.m. on Monday, October 26, 2026. That is eleven days, around the clock, which is considerably more time than a single day at a polling station.

Help Centres. If you want a hand doing it, staff will be available at the Tim Horton Event Centre Community Hall, 7 Tim Horton Drive, and at the Cochrane Public Library, 178 Fourth Avenue. Both are open Monday October 19, Thursday October 22 and Saturday October 24 from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and on voting day, Monday October 26, from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Mobile assistance at home. The Town says home assistance may be available for electors who cannot attend a Help Centre due to mobility or other approved circumstances, on the same dates and hours. If that applies to you or to someone you look after, call the Clerk’s office early rather than in the last week.

Voting Resolution Centre. If your voter information letter does not arrive, your PIN does not work, or there is a question about identification, go to the Municipal Office at 171 Fourth Avenue. Open October 16 to 23 on weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and on October 26 from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.

The voters’ list. The revision period opened August 25, 2026. You can check whether your information appears on the list at the Cochrane Public Library, the Municipal Office, or Public Works at 92 Second Street. Changes can only be made at the Municipal Office, by the Clerk or Deputy Clerk. This is the one thing I would do now rather than later: if you are not on the list correctly, the voter information letter does not reach you, and that letter is what lets you vote.

One change behind the scenes worth knowing about. Elections Ontario now maintains the voters’ register used for municipal elections. MPAC no longer prepares the municipal voters’ list, although it still collects the school support information that determines which school board ballot you receive.

What is on the ballot. Mayor (1), Councillors (6), and School Board Trustee for French Public Zone F, which covers Cochrane, Iroquois Falls and Black River-Matheson. The Town has published the certified candidates list, and also has an interactive map if you are not certain whether your address falls inside the municipal boundary.

How the decision was made

Four steps, all in the public record.

September 23, 2025

The Clerk brought Report 2025-142 to Council, setting out Council’s responsibilities under the Municipal Elections Act, 1996 and comparing five voting methods: traditional paper ballot, paper ballot with vote tabulators, vote by mail, telephone voting, and internet voting.

The report weighed each method against inclusivity, infrastructure, staffing and cost. On paper ballots it noted the difficulty of staffing polling stations given Cochrane’s geography, October weather, and AMCTO data showing the Cochrane District experienced election staffing challenges 22 per cent above the provincial average. On paper with tabulators it noted that the equipment used in 2022 is no longer in service, so that route would mean leasing or buying new machines. On vote by mail it flagged delivery reliability in Northern Ontario and the absence of mailbox numbers in Cochrane. The Clerk recommended internet and telephone voting together.

Council passed Resolution 2025-326 authorizing telephone and internet voting for the October 26, 2026 election, moved by Councillor Nelson and seconded by Councillor Reimer.

October 14, 2025

Council enacted By-law 2025-98, which puts the method into force. Worth knowing what else the by-law does: it confirms electors are not required to attend a voting place, it states that proxy voting is not permitted while this method is in effect, it extends the method to any by-election during the 2026 to 2030 term, and it leaves the advance voting dates to be agreed between the Town and the service provider.

December 2025

The Clerk issued RFP ADMIN-2025-01 inviting vendors to bid on internet and telephone voting services. Bidders had to clear fifteen mandatory requirements, including a security and compliance statement, a data residency statement, proof that the system complies with By-law 2025-98, and a product presentation to Council and staff.

February 10, 2026

Report 2026-03 brought the results back to Council. Five proposals came in. Two were disqualified for missing mandatory requirements. Three were scored out of 100 on firm experience, project approach and cost: Intelivote Systems Inc. scored 100, Voatz Canada Ltd. 84, and Sequent Tech Inc. 79.

The evaluation noted that Ontario has no provincially mandated technical standards for internet and telephone voting, and gave weight to Intelivote for aligning its system with CAN/DGSI 111-1:2024, a national online voting standard published by the Digital Governance Council. Intelivote’s prior experience running Cochrane’s 2022 election was also cited as reducing delivery risk.

The contract was awarded by Resolution 2026-51, moved by Councillor Reimer and seconded by Councillor Recoskie. The pricing, based on an estimated 3,608 eligible electors, is $1.25 per elector for the voting service and $1.75 per voter information package, with no charge for onsite visits or training, for a total of $10,824.

What the rest of Ontario is doing

The Association of Municipalities of Ontario keeps a public table of the voting method every municipality is using in 2026, next to what it used in 2022. It is the best single source on this, and it is worth a look: 2026 Vote Methods by Municipality. AMO notes it cannot guarantee the table is complete or current, so treat it as a very good guide rather than gospel.

Ontario has 444 municipalities, but only the lower and single tier ones run their own elections. The charts below cover all 413 of those listed in AMO’s table. The category totals are tallied from that table rather than taken from an official provincial summary, so treat them as accurate to within a municipality or two.

2022

413 municipalities

Online or phone only 158 · 38%
Online plus paper 64 · 16%
Paper only 109 · 26%
Mail based 77 · 19%
Not recorded 5 · 1%

2026

413 municipalities

Online or phone only 199 · 48%
Online plus paper 74 · 18%
Paper only 90 · 22%
Mail based 50 · 12%

Counted from AMO’s 2026 Vote Methods by Municipality table. “Online or phone only” means no paper ballot of any kind. “Mail based” groups vote by mail on its own or combined with another method. In 2022 five municipalities had their entire council acclaimed with no method recorded.

What changed between 2022 and 2026

Municipalities with no paper ballot at all went from 158 to 199. That is 41 more, an increase of 26 per cent, and it means just under half the province is now voting the way Cochrane will.
Municipalities offering some form of internet voting, with or without paper, went from 226 to 275, or two in every three.
Paper only dropped from 109 to 90. Vote by mail dropped from 77 to 50.
Cochrane is one of those 41. In 2022 the Town offered internet, telephone and paper. In 2026 it is internet and telephone.

Some context on the trend. AMO recorded 175 municipalities using internet or phone voting in 2018 and 217 in 2022, so this has been building for a while rather than arriving suddenly. Ontario is unusual internationally in how widely it does this, and the pattern within the province is that smaller, more remote municipalities have adopted it while the biggest cities largely have not. Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, Mississauga, Kitchener and Windsor are all using paper in 2026. Closer to home, Timmins is offering internet and paper, Kapuskasing has moved to internet, and Hearst, Iroquois Falls, Smooth Rock Falls, Kirkland Lake and Moosonee are staying with paper.

How Cochrane voted in 2022

When Intelivote presented to Council on March 24, 2026, the deck included a breakdown of the 2022 Cochrane election by age and by voting channel. It is the most useful public data we have on how this actually works here, and it is not easy to find, so it is worth reproducing. The slide is page 15 of the agenda package for that meeting, under agenda item 4.1.

In 2022 there were 3,608 eligible electors and 2,070 of them voted, a turnout of 57.4 per cent. Paper was still available that year. 771 people used it, and the other 1,299, or 62.8 per cent, voted by internet or telephone.

Age	Eligible	Voted	Turnout	Internet	Phone	Paper	Share paperless
18 to 19	54	23	42.6 %	18	0	5	78.3 %
20s	335	129	38.5 %	105	1	23	82.2 %
30s	498	211	42.4 %	156	6	49	76.8 %
40s	574	311	54.2 %	210	16	85	72.7 %
50s	657	359	54.6 %	224	31	104	71.0 %
60s	722	517	71.6 %	265	39	213	58.8 %
70s	477	354	74.2 %	144	21	189	46.6 %
80s	196	136	69.4 %	41	14	81	40.4 %
90s	36	24	66.7 %	6	2	16	33.3 %
99 plus	1	0	0.0 %	0	0	0	No votes cast
Age unknown	58	6	10.3 %	0	0	6	0.0 %
All electors	3,608	2,070	57.4 %	1,169	130	771	62.8 %

Internet or phone
Paper

Source: Intelivote Systems Inc. presentation to Regular Council, March 24, 2026, agenda item 4.1, page 15 of the agenda package. The slide places a label over part of the table, so the vote counts for the 18 to 19, 20s and 30s rows are not legible on it. The figures given here for those three rows, 23, 129 and 211, are calculated from the channel columns and confirmed against both the participation rates and the column totals printed on the same slide. The final column is arithmetic of mine rather than a figure the Town published. “Age unknown” is the slide’s UK row, electors whose date of birth is not recorded.

Two things in that table seem worth pointing out. The first is that use of internet and telephone voting falls steadily with age, from 82.2 per cent among voters in their twenties down to 33.3 per cent among voters in their nineties. The crossover is in the seventies, which is the first cohort where paper was the majority channel.

The second is that the electors who relied on paper are also the electors most likely to vote. Of the 771 paper ballots cast in 2022, 499 came from people aged seventy or older, and those are the highest turnout cohorts in the table, between 66.7 and 74.2 per cent. In 2026 the option they used last time is not on the table, so the telephone line, the Help Centres and the at-home assistance have to carry that group instead. If you are in that position, or you look after someone who is, the voters’ list and the voter information letter are the things to sort out now rather than in the last week of October.

One smaller point. Telephone voting is a minority channel but not a trivial one: 130 votes in 2022, 6.3 per cent of all ballots cast, and it was used most heavily by electors in their eighties. It is the part of the system that gets the least attention and matters most to the people who need it.

Questions people are asking

I do not have internet or a computer. Can I still vote? Yes. Telephone voting is a full alternative, not a fallback. You call the number in your voter information letter and vote using your phone’s keypad, with the PIN you were mailed. It works on a landline. The Clerk’s report to Council specifically identified telephone voting as one of the most inclusive methods available, because nearly every elector has access to a phone. If you would rather not do it alone, the Help Centres and the at-home assistance described above exist for exactly this.

Can someone vote on my behalf? Not by proxy. By-law 2025-98 states that proxy voting is not permitted while this voting method is in effect. If you need help using the system, ask the Clerk’s office what assistance is available. Sharing your PIN with another person is not the same thing as a proxy and is not how the system is meant to be used.

Is it secure? What rules govern this? There are more rules here than most people expect, and all of them are published. The Municipal Elections Act, 1996 sets the legal frame. Section 42 lets Council authorize an alternative voting method by by-law, and requires the Clerk to establish written procedures and forms for it. Section 42(6) provides that no votes may be counted until after voting closes on voting day. And the offence provisions that protect a paper ballot election protect this one too: under section 90, a knowing offence carries penalties up to six months imprisonment on top of anything else, and constitutes a corrupt practice.

Cochrane’s Clerk has published the procedures made under that authority, and they are worth knowing about because they are the actual rules for this election. They include an Alternative Voting Method Procedure, a Voting System Integrity Procedure, a Voter Information Letter security procedure, a Voters’ List Administration Procedure, a Scrutineers Procedure, an Emergency Procedure, an Accessibility Plan, and a Recount Procedure alongside Council’s Recount Policy. Every one of them is linked below. If you want to know how this election is run, you do not have to take anyone’s word for it, including mine.

On the technology itself, the system is a vendor-hosted platform from Intelivote Systems Inc. The Clerk’s report to Council describes it as Canada’s leading municipal eVoting provider, having delivered more than 305 municipal election events and more than 24 provincial political leadership elections since 2006. It also ran Cochrane’s 2022 election. It aligns with CAN/DGSI 111-1:2024, the national standard for online voting in Canadian municipal elections published by the Digital Governance Council, and that alignment was one of the reasons it scored as it did in the RFP. The Town hosts a copy of that standard on its own elections page, linked below, if you want to read what it requires.

What if I do not get my voter information letter? Go to the Voting Resolution Centre at the Municipal Office, 171 Fourth Avenue, or call the Clerk’s office at 705-272-4361 ext. 229. Better still, check now that you are on the voters’ list correctly. The revision period is already open.

Can this be changed for 2026? No. Under the Municipal Elections Act, a by-law authorizing an alternative voting method has to be passed by May 1 of the year before the election. By-law 2025-98 was passed in October 2025 and the contract was awarded in February 2026. The method for October 2026 is settled. The next opportunity to revisit it is ahead of the 2030 election.

Sources and links

The rules for this election, published by the Town

How the decision was made: Town of Cochrane council record

Provincial, standards, and comparison

If you have a question about voting that this page does not answer, the Clerk’s office is the right place to ask, since they administer the election and I do not. You can reach them at 705-272-4361. If you think I have got something wrong here, tell me and I will fix it. Corrections are logged below.

Updates and corrections

September 1, 2026. Added “How Cochrane voted in 2022”, the age and channel breakdown from the Intelivote presentation to Council on March 24, 2026.
August 31, 2026. First published.

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