The COVID-19 pandemic just may have fundamentally shifted the way some people choose to vote from here on.

Nearly a quarter of a million residents chose to either vote early or vote by mail in the days leading up to the October 26 election date.

Tim Kydd is a spokesperson for Elections Saskatchewan. He says that the province approved and sent out over 61,000 mail-in voting kits.

"They started to be available in the middle of August up until the deadline of October 15, so a two-month period. So that was considerably higher than the 4,400 we had in 2016."

That increase, and the delay in counting those ballots, did not factor into the final determination of the vote as it turns out. The margin of victory for the Sask Party in most ridings was larger than the individual mail-in ballots that are awaiting count. And while there are a few close ridings in larger centres where those ballots may make a difference after the official results are published, the end result of a Sask Party majority was decided early in the evening.

Here in the southwest, for example, a total of 2,213 mail-in ballots were sent out between the four ridings of Cypress Hills, Lumsden-Morse, Swift Current and Wood River. While that is a large increase from the last election cycle, the Sask Party's victory in those ridings by an average of 4,200. As a result, no amount of mail-in ballots will change the results we saw closer to home.

Similarly, 185,000 residents chose to take advantage of advance voting this year; 75,000 more than in 2016.

"It's (mail-in voting) been offered for decades and it generally for people who are out of the province already. This election, because we're in the pandemic period here, we knew that there would be some people who wanted to vote but would not be comfortable coming into a poll, no matter how safe we made it."

Kydd added that organizing an election during a pandemic was a new experience; with more poll locations, larger areas to manage social distancing and some extraordinary voting measures in place in areas that were under pandemic lockdown.

Whether that up-tick in both mail-in and advance polls will outlast the pandemic remains to be seen. 

 

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