It’s not easy to get out to vote when you’re elderly and blind.

For 80-year-old Santosh Khera of Kingston, exercising her democratic right in the federal election became the stuff of nightmares this week when a volunteer driver for the NDP kicked her out of his car for her plan to vote Liberal.

“That’s why I don’t sleep so much,” an emotional Khera told the Whig-Standard. “I cried and cried.”

Her ordeal started on Tuesday morning when she received a call from the campaign office of Kingston and the Islands NDP candidate Daniel Beals, offering her a ride on election day this coming Monday.

Khera said she would like to vote that same day, Tuesday, so a campaign worker arranged for a driver to come around later in the morning and take her directly to the Elections Canada office on Princess Street.

“She said ‘that’s no problem I can send a ride,’” Khera recalled.

Khera said that, in hindsight, she wasn’t sure which party was calling her.

She is, in fact, a Liberal supporter with a large Mark Gerretsen campaign sign on her front lawn.

When the NDP driver arrived, she went out to his car and got buckled into the passenger seat.

“He said, ‘Are you going to vote today? Who are you going to vote for?’ I said, ‘Liberal’,” Khera said.

“He said: ‘Lady, I’m sorry. Just you get out of my car. If you’re not going to vote NDP, get out of my car.’ I got out of his car and he left. This guy had no right, first of all, to ask how I would vote.”

Khera said the man even questioned whether she was legally blind.

A spokeswoman for the NDP confirmed the next day that the incident had taken place.

“I’m so upset about this,” said Aimee Van Vlack, the local NDP campaign manager. “I feel terrible about it. This is not what our campaign does.”

All campaign teams offer rides, though usually only to party supporters.

Van Vlack said the campaign office records show that NDP canvassers originally went to Khera’s door on Oct. 3.

She was identified as being a Liberal supporter and there were no notes from the encounter to indicate she wanted a ride to the polls on Oct. 19.

Last week, however, the NDP records also show someone called them to arrange for Khera to receive a ride.

Her call was returned on Tuesday and the arrangements were made.

Van Vlack said that campaign person likely didn’t know if Khera was a Liberal or NDP supporter.

“We do try to focus on our supporters to get out the vote,” she said. “If she asked, we’d still take her. We’ll take anyone to the polls.”

Van Vlack said drivers like the one who went to Khera’s home on Tuesday are not told to screen their passengers.

“His behaviour, regardless of what happened, is unacceptable,” she said. “I’m not going to make any excuses for him.”

Van Vlack wouldn’t say how the man was dealt with.

“He will not be dealing with electors at all. I will not be sending him out to drive,” she said.

On Tuesday afternoon, Khera was taken to the election office to vote — by a female NDP worker sent specifically by Van Vlack.

The volunteer took an hour to go into the office with her, help her register and prepare to mark her ballot.

Khera said Van Vlack and the other NDP workers who called her after the incident were “very pleasant. They said: ‘we are sorry, we apologize.’”

But she remains upset about her treatment by the volunteer driver.

“It was a big insult,” she said. “They should know what kind of volunteers they have. He threw me out of his car.”

paul.schliesmann@sunmedia.ca