Windsor mayor Drew Dilkens is in favour of looking into online voting for future municipal elections if it makes sense for the city.
Speaking on AM800's Mornings with Mike and Meg, Dilkens says council looked at online voting a number of years ago but it was not recommended by city administration at the time.
"It maybe time to look at it again but I'm not sure that we would be in a position to do internet only voting in the city of Windsor," says Dilkens.
As AM800 news reported on Monday, LaSalle council is being asked to approve internet voting only for the 2026 municipal election and to eliminate telephone voting as an option.
Dilkens says the last time the issue was brought forward, internet voting hadn't demonstrated the ability to increase the overall voter turnout.
"There's a lot of folks who want to exercise their vote by attending in person," says Dilkens. "Folks who don't necessarily have the capability to vote on a phone or over the internet and we certainly don't want to do anything to stipule peoples ability to vote but where there's an opportunity to increase the voter turnout than that's something we're really interested in."
He says there is an added expense for online voting.
"If it's not going to actually improve voter turnout then the question is why are we spending more money on the vote," he says. "It's worth looking at, perhaps things have changed over the last six or seven years since we last considered it and we can continue to monitor that and see if that makes sense for the city of Windsor."
The current voting method for municipal elections in Windsor is in-person voting.
The voter turnout in 2018 was 35.21% and 31.57% in 2022.