The City of Regina is sending out their voter information cards this week.
The voting cards are to ensure voters know where to go to cast their ballots for the school board and municipal election, and also touches on different ways to vote, including drive-thru and mail-in voting.
The city’s returning officer Jim Nicol says there are extra measures in place for this election, including a COVID-19 screening.
“If you pass that screening you will be asked to wear a mask, you will then proceed down a very tightly controlled corridor to the polling station,” Nicol said. “In there, all of our workers will be masked, there’ll be physical distancing, there’ll line markers, we will have extra people on site that day just disinfecting every surface that can be touched.”
The municipal election is being held three weeks from today, but advanced polls in five locations throughout the city will be available on November 2nd, 3rd and 4th.
If voters decide to cast their ballot by mail, Nicol says there is a deadline in place for mail-in ballots to be returned.
“This isn’t something that, three weeks later, we will count them,” Nicol said. “They have to be in the possession at the election office on Solomon Crescent by 8:00 PM on Nov. 9.”
With just a two week gap between the provincial and municipal election, Nicol says he personally would like to see more of a time gap in the future.
“Two weeks is a very short period of time for people to wrap their heads around the distinction between the orders of government and the candidates, and I think that’s only been exacerbated this year with the pandemic,” Nicol said. “Are people paying attention? People with young children going to school, they got a lot of things on their plate.”
If residents don’t receive a voter information card, they are to visit the city’s election page online.
