Rejected ballots spike in Chatham-Kent-Leamington in 2022 provincial election

A polling station on Election Day in Windsor, Ont., on Thursday, June 2, 2022. (Sanjay Maru/CTV News Windsor)

More than one thousand ballots were rejected by Elections Ontario in the riding that had a last-minute withdrawal of the Liberal candidate.

According to Elections Ontario, there were 1,791 rejected ballots out of 36,870 votes cast in the 2022 election.

In the 2018 election, there were 175 rejected ballots out of the total 46,373 valid ones.

This is the riding which garnered a lot of attention because of changes to the Liberal candidate.

Alec Mazurek was initially the candidate in Chatham-Kent-Leamington until the NDP released screengrabs of homophobic statements allegedly written by Mazurek on social media eight years ago.

Mazurek was removed by the Liberal Party of Ontario as a result.

Shortly after, Audrey Festeryga submitted paperwork to run for the party, on the day of the deadline to run.

Within days, the NDP expressed concern with the validity of the signatures used on Festeryga’s candidacy paperwork, but Festeryga and the Liberal party maintained the signatures were valid and accepted by Elections Ontario.

But then just a few days before Election Day — and after advance polls had been open — Festeryga resigned.

Elections Ontario confirmed that before June 2, any vote cast for Festeryga would not count.