Peterborough Election - Fail...

As did many people in the province I went out to cast my vote last night in our municipal election. To my dismay I was unsuccessful. I have never had an issue in the past and I cannot remember a time when it has taken me more then 5 minutes to flash my ID, my registration card and fill out my ballot.
I arrived at city hall around 7pm only to find hoards of people snaking through the hallways and security guards trying to keep everyone in single file against the wall. I was told it was at least an hour wait, I tried to remain patient as people continued to file in and nobody came out. All around me I heard stories of 1 to 2 hour line ups at polling stations across the city all day. After 10 minutes of sweating my balls off in the overcrowded, overheating hallway I left in search of another place to vote, alas all I found was much of the same at Adam Scott and even worse at the Library and as I really wasn't all that passionate about this election I decided it wasn't worth my time and patience so I went home.
For the last several weeks I have been bombarded via the radio with complaints about how poor voter turn out is here in Canada and the candidates urging everyone to get out and exercise their democratic right to elect our own leaders. Alas voter turn out was down almost 3% in Peterborough from the last election and they could not even properly manage the numbers they received. How much of that 3% actually showed up but turned away? How can they expect to get more people to take that initiative when they make it such a miserable experience? What if voter turn out increased? What if everyone did decide to vote? It would have been pandemonium.
In the end Daryl Bennett was elected mayor. A local business man with little to no experience in politics. This fact was used against him extensively by his opponent Paul Ayotte during the race. But after being disappointed by city hall yet again I wonder could it be such a bad thing to have someone in charge that has proven he can run a profitable, successful organization and understands the value of customer service? I guess I’ll have to wait and see how the next four years go but I hope that by the time the next election rolls around in four years some kind of progress is made and municipal services actually start to resemble an effective operation working to serve their shareholders, the public. A man can dream, I guess.