With Brampton's municipal election two weeks away, candidates are questioning how the City will prevent people from voting more than once, now that voter cards list numerous polling locations residents can choose from within their ward — in some cases more than a dozen.

Voters should have already received their cards for the October 26 vote. The change from the usual system — which assigns each voter a single designated polling station — has prompted candidates and residents to ask how the City would flag a duplicate ballot, The Pointer reported.

Monica Singh Soares, a candidate for council in Wards 7 and 8, said she is not alleging wrongdoing but wants clear answers about the safeguards in place.

Confidence in the integrity of the election has to come first, says candidate Monica Singh Soares. These are not accusations…they're basic election integrity questions.

The City of Brampton website says the Voters' List is live, and that when someone votes they are marked as having done so immediately, with all other voting locations seeing the same information. The site also says the City has procedures and safeguards covering voting and vote-counting equipment, that each piece of equipment is tested before an election, and that all tabulated votes have a corresponding paper ballot. It notes the equipment's use is permitted under Ontario's Municipal Elections Act and is common across the province.

But the website offers little detail on how those protections work. The Pointer reported that it asked City staff how a worker at one polling station would know whether a voter had already cast a ballot elsewhere, and how any duplicate votes would be flagged and reconciled. The newspaper said it received no response, and that staff did not explain why the usual single-station system was dropped this year.

Mayoral candidate Prabh Gill sent a letter to the City Clerk raising questions about the electronic voting and tabulation equipment. He wrote that he is not alleging wrongdoing by the City, staff or any supplier, but wants residents and candidates to have the same clear information before voting begins.

Gill noted the City's bids and tenders page for the lease of the election tabulation and electronic voting system shows the bid as awarded on January 9, 2026, but lists no awarded vendor and no contract value. He submitted ten questions covering the supplier, contract value, bid scoring, whether results are transmitted wirelessly on election night, what independent and cybersecurity testing will be done, and whether candidates can observe equipment testing and certification.

A review circulating online has also raised concerns about the vote-counting process. According to the document, the American company ES&S supplied Brampton's tabulators — DS200 machines and 15 ExpressVote accessible units — for the 2022 election. It notes that in 2023, a coding error on ExpressVote XL machines in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, caused printed summaries to flip judicial retention votes, and that ES&S acknowledged fault.

Soares said the City's approach effectively relies on the honour system, and urged officials to do more than simply ask voters to trust the process. She also raised concerns about identification, noting a voter notice on its own is not ID.

There's a culture of corruption, she said. And people are nervous. And I think that's what may be an elephant in the room that people are not talking about.

The Pointer reported that Mayor Patrick Brown did not respond when asked about the switch to multiple voting locations or whether an independent external auditor is monitoring the voting machines. The newspaper said the City Clerk's office and elections coordinator Roger Wilson also received questions about fraud protections, including whether an independent oversight auditor would be hired.

Soares said the issue is not the technology itself. "Technology isn't inherently the problem, transparency is the issue," she said.