MONTREAL - Jim Kargakos was so angry at not being able to vote on Tuesday, he couldn’t sleep all night.

The 56-year-old Beaconsfield man was turned away at the polling station because he wasn’t on the voters’ list.

“They looked me up and said: ‘We don’t have any record of you.’

“I said: ‘You’re kidding!’ ” said Kargakos, who has voted in every previous election since 1976. The owner of a computer consulting company, he has lived in his present home for six years.

“I feel robbed. I had something taken away from me. It’s my right,” he said.

Kargakos was far from the only person denied the right to vote in Tuesday’s provincial election.

In Westmount-St. Louis, about 120 people, including a 95-year-old woman, were turned away at Westmount High School because their names were not on the voters’ list, said Scott Harman-Heath, who worked there on election day.

They represented about two per cent of the approximately 5,500 voters inscribed on the rolls at that polling station, said Harman-Heath, 19, a biology student at McGill University.

“The first couple of times, you write it off,” he said. “But by the end of the day, I was so frustrated at having to deny people the right to vote.”

Caroline Paquin, an information officer with the Director General of Elections, denied there were widespread cases of people being turned away at the polls on Tuesday.

Paquin said there were no more voting irregularities than usual.

The deadline for demanding a recount in ridings where the results are contested is Sept. 10, she said.

It’s up to voters to make sure they are registered to vote, Paquin added.

“We make great efforts to promote awareness of the importance of being on the list.”

The Director General of Elections sends out a notice to all eligible voters before the election, followed by a reminder with the address of the local polling station, she noted.

If your name is not on the initial notice, you must contact the DGE to put your name on the list, she said.

This year, the period for doing so was Aug. 13-30.

But Kargakos said he simply assumed he was on the list because he had never had a problem voting before.

While he was not on the list, his 24-year-old daughter, Kristina, was. “Her name appeared by magic,” he said. “I received nothing and I’m the homeowner.”

Harman-Heath said he saw many cases of couples where one spouse was on the list but the other was not.

Harman-Heath said that given how close many of the races were in Tuesday’s vote, problems with the voters’ list had a real potential to affect the results. “It’s a miscarriage of democracy,” he said.

Natalie Ross, 25, was on the voters’ list but polling stations officials turned her away because she showed up without the proper ID. Ross brought the reminder from the DGE, her medicare card and learner’s permit, but election workers at the polling station on St. Urbain St. north of Milton St. deemed them insufficient. “To be honest, they weren’t very nice and I gave up,” she said.

Paquin said to get your name on the permanent voters’ list for next time, call the DGE at 1-888-353-2846.

mascot@montrealgazette.com