Peterborough voter says he got pre-marked ballot at advance poll

A Peterborough, Ont.student says he was givenapre-markedballot when he went to vote at the advancepolls on Thanksgiving Monday, but Elections Canada says they haveno record of it.

Jeff Campbell, a 23-year-old political science student at Trent University, sayshe votedat the Lions Community Centre in hisPeterboroughKawartha riding andwatched the polling officials rip a ballot out of their book,initial it and give it to him.

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When he got to the voting booth, he says he looked down at it and noticed an X marked beside the name of the Conservative candidate for the area.

"This was a very clearly marked X in the ballot. Not...streaks or a smudge or anything like that. It was very obviously intended to mark a vote," he told CBC News on Saturday.

"My first thought was maybe they just handed me somebody else's ballot that had just come through, but it wasn't. They looked it up, it was matched up in the book with what they meant to give me so it must have been something else."

Campbell says poll officials very apologeticallyreplaced it with a blank ballot. He said they made sure thepre-marked ballot he had gotten wasspoiled.

Elections Canada has 'no official reports'

James Hale, a media adviser with Elections Canada, saysthere areno officialreports of this happening in theriding.

"The procedure for dealing with a spoiled ballot is well documented," he said in a written statement.

"Although printing errors can, on rare occasions, cause ink streaking on the ballots, which are jointly bound in books."

Last week, aVancouver teacher who voted in anadvancepollwas giventwo pre-markedballots, which had black streaksnext to the Conservative and Green Party candidates' names. Elections Canada blamedthe instance on printing issues,calling it"extremely rare."

Campbell, who identifies as a Liberal supporter,sayshis ballot did not look like a printing error.

"Itvery clearly looked like a handwritten X and it seemed like pencil."

Campbell posted apublic status update on hisFacebookpage on Monday night, sharing his story andremindingvoters to "be careful when voting."Thatpost has now been shared more than 2,300 times.

Hehas filed a complaint with Elections Canada, but has yet to hear back. He also reported it to the office ofMaryam Monsef, thelocal Liberal candidate, whose team was going to follow up with Elections Canada. The office said they were aware of the alleged incident when contacted byCBC NewsSaturday.

"It could have been someone making a mistake or something, but it does seem very fishy to me that this kind of thing was able to happen," Campbell said.

The PeterboroughKawartha riding has been without a member of Parliament since last November, when Dean Del Mastroresigned from the House of Commons after beingfound guilty of spending too much on his 2008 election campaign andcovering it up.