---
title: "Nearly half of Ottawa mail-in voter kits did not reach Elections Ottawa by the deadline"
description: "The city issued 5,511 special ballot kits for the October 26 election. Only 2,957 were returned by the October 16 deadline. Voters who did not return their kit can still vote in person on Monday."
canonical_url: "https://voche.me/on/ottawa-2026/news/ottawa-mail-ballot-count-2026-10-23"
last_updated: "2026-10-24T00:10:16.472Z"
---

The City of Ottawa sent out 5,511 special ballot voter kits for the October 26, 2026 municipal election. Elections Ottawa received only 2,957 of them, 53 per cent, by the 8 p.m. deadline on October 16, city clerk Caitlin Salter MacDonald wrote in a statement reported by the Ottawa Citizen on October 23.

That means 2,494 kits did not arrive on time and those ballots will not be counted. Voters were notified by email on Tuesday, October 20, six days before election day and four days after the last advance voting opportunity.

## What the city clerk said

Salter MacDonald said the deadline was set under the Municipal Elections Act and that the city worked with Canada Post to flag the return deadline and speed up processing where possible. "While Canada Post's standard delivery timelines indicated that this timeframe would generally be sufficient, mail service and delivery remains outside the control of the municipality," she wrote.

Canada Post told the Ottawa Citizen that a special team was working with the city on its election mail. Its Ottawa operations team saw no delays in delivery between October 5 and 12, though no mail was delivered on October 12, which was Thanksgiving Monday. The standard delivery time for mail within a city is two days from the point a letter arrives at the processing plant, Canada Post said.

## A gap from 2022

In 2022, the first year Ottawa offered mail-in voting in a municipal election, the city issued 10,179 kits and received 8,685 back by the deadline, which was 85 per cent. This year's 53 per cent return rate is far below that. The city did not explain why so few kits came back in time.

One Ottawa resident, Colleen Francis, told the Ottawa Citizen she had placed her ballot in a Canada Post box more than a week before the October 16 deadline and was surprised to learn it had not arrived. "I dropped it in the morning, so to go eight days to wherever it has to go seems shocking," she said.

## 60 voters switched to advance voting

The Ottawa Citizen also reported that 60 people who requested a mail-in kit chose to vote in person during advance voting instead. Advance voting in Ottawa ran from October 1 to 4 and again on October 16, with polling places open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on each of those days.

## You can still vote in person on Monday

Voters whose mail-in kits were not received by the deadline can still vote in person on election day. Polling stations across Ottawa are open on Monday, October 26 from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Voters who cannot go in person can contact Elections Ottawa for help, including information about the proxy voting process, the city said.

Candidate pages for all 24 wards and the mayor's race are at [/on/ottawa-2026/candidates](/on/ottawa-2026/candidates#mayor).

## Sitemap

See the full [sitemap](/on/ottawa-2026/sitemap.md) for all pages.