Many Sarnia-Lambton residents were given a new polling station for this year's federal election.
That's because the number of local polling stations and scheduled polls are down from the last time Canadians went to vote in 2019, according to Elections Canada.
Regional Media Advisor Réjean Grenier said many constituencies across the country have also seen a drop in voting sites. He said a lot of places that traditionally hosted polling stations, like schools and some commercial buildings, were not available this year because of the pandemic.
"What happened, obviously, is we've had to put more sites into bigger spaces. So, the number of polls are pretty well even, but the number of sites might be a little bit different."
Grenier said because of the change, it's very important electors look at their voter information card so that they head to the right polling location. The information can also be found on the Elections Canada website.
Grenier said the agency hired around 85 per cent of the poll workers they were hoping to bring aboard.
"The issue here is we always aim for more, we always aim for replacement people, basically just in case," said Grenier. "We have enough people to run an election no problem, and we always run short. In the last election, we were looking for 250,000 people and we got 230,000 and it worked really well."
Grenier said the Lambton-Kent-Middlesex riding is scheduled to have the same number of polls as 2019, and a few less polling stations. He added that the number of polls can change, even on election day, if there is a surge or a lack of electors.
