As promised, and over two years to go before the next provincial and municipal elections in 2026, Elections Ontario has made it’s move to take over the voters list for all elections in Ontario. In other words, 2022 was the last election where the list of voters is managed by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC), who has managed that list for the last 15 years with varying degrees of success. But now, voting is a one-stop shop!

As of New Year’s Day, Elections Ontario is now in charge of managing the voters’ list for municipal council and school board elections for all of Ontario’s 444 municipalities, in addition to their responsibilities managing the quadrennial provincial elections. Step one, announced today, is to encourage all Ontario voters to visit RegisterToVoteON.ca so that they can provide their up-to-date information.

“With RegisterToVoteON.ca, we’re making it easier and more convenient for Ontarians to sign up to vote in local and provincial elections,” said Greg Essensa, Chief Electoral Officer of Ontario in a statement. “We’re thrilled to be working with our local partners by providing them with the most up-to-date voters lists to support their elections.”

MPAC’s management of the voters’ list in Ontario has been a repeated point of concern for municipalities around Ontario. Their primary role is in the assessment of property values around the province, which then provides municipalities with the basis to calculate property taxes.

One of the critiques of the MPAC voters’ list is that it’s less accurate for renters than for property owners. According to an agency representative (and reported by the Kingston Whig Standard), accuracy for property owners on the list was 93 per cent and 79 per cent for tenants and boarders.

“The PLE (preliminary list of electors) is created primarily from MPAC’s Property Assessment Database and MPAC’s Names Database, and to the extent possible, contains the names and addresses of owners/tenants/boarders of all property in Ontario,” Paula Chung told the Whig-Standard.

One concerning example about the inaccuracy of MPAC’s list comes from 2018 in Mono, which is a town just north of Orangeville. Not only did a dog named Cookie Bear receive a voter information card in the mail, but the dog itself had been dead for four years by the time the card was received. There was an additional level of concern because the town was using internet and telephone voting and the PIN number to use of those methods was included on the card.

A paper out of Western University in 2018 called the “Ontario Municipal Voters’ List Reform Project“cited a number of concerns about MPAC’s management of the list including duplication, MPAC’s inability to get up-to-date information, and the over reliance on city clerks to proactively make corrections.

“While more accurate voters’ lists may result in slightly higher turnout, because so few people participate in municipal elections, electors do not learn their voting information is inaccurate, and, as a result, governments have little incentive to act,” read the report’s conclusion. “There’s probably never going to be a completely accurate voters list in any jurisdiction. It is a question of what accuracy level is acceptable.”