(File photo/ CKOM News Staff)

By Lara Fominoff

Elections Saskatchewan preparing to process tens of thousands of mail-in ballots

Oct 5, 2020 | 4:22 PM

During the previous provincial election, about 4,000 mail-in ballots were processed and counted by Elections Saskatchewan.

This time around, chief electoral officer Michael Boda is getting ready for at least 10 times that number.

Speaking with 650 CKOM’s Brent Loucks on Monday, Boda says Elections Saskatchewan officials are getting busier every day, especially with the election just three weeks away.

“It’s a busy time … I really want to encourage people to think about applying now for their vote-by-mail ballots if they’re thinking of voting that way,” Boda said.

While he’s expecting there to be between 40,000 and 50,000 ballots, his staff are prepared to process more than that.

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“We’re prepared to do about four times that much if needed because we’re not certain of how many will come in,” he said.

For those who have never sent in a ballot, Boda explained how it works.

“We do not send out ballots proactively,” he said. “You need to apply for what’s called an absentee vote-by-mail ballot in the province. What you do is go to our website at elections.sk.ca, or give us a call and you can complete your application online.”

If you don’t want to do that, you can also download the application as well, print it out and mail it in.

Once the application is accepted, the ballot kit will be sent out.

The kit needs to be completed and in the mail by 8 p.m. on Oct. 26. Postage is already paid.

The deadline for mail-in ballot applications is Oct. 15 at 11:59 p.m. Boda says you can even track your ballot to make sure it gets to its destination similarly to the way packages are tracked.

Mail-in ballots will be counted two days after election day, and a final count will be completed 12 days after the election for the rest of the ballots. That may affect the outcome in some constituencies if the votes are very close.

“Those close races, it may very well do that,” he said. “The people of Saskatchewan should know that this is going to be a very different-looking election and it will have a different feel to it.”