It was a whirlwind of a night. Last minute votes and long lines-up stalled election results from being released in the Saskatoon civic election for little over an hour on Oct. 26.
More than 80,000 voters took to the polls to cast their ballots, numbers not seen since the 2003 civic election.
FULL COVERAGE: Saskatoon civic election
At 9:08 p.m. CT, the results started to pour in, which are still unofficial until Friday morning.
“The Accu-Vote units printed off the results tape last night but those results are uploaded to a database,” Catherine Folkersen, Saskatoon’s first returning officer, explained.
“We want to make sure that no numbers are transposed between the tapes that came off last night at the polls and what happened when we uploaded those to a database so we have to make certain that those numbers are correct.”
Official results will be declared Friday morning at 11 a.m. and Folkersen said there was no indication of issues at the majority of polling stations until right at the very end.
“95 per cent of voters didn’t have the long lines but we do acknowledge that there were three polls where there were line-ups at the end,” she said.
“If you were in line by eight o’clock the doors were closed behind you and you did get to vote which is why we weren’t declaring results until after nine o’clock – we have to make sure no voters are voting when results are being declared.”
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In 2012, 66,459 ballots were cast out of an estimated 180,411 eligible voters for a turnout of 36.9 per cent. Below are last night’s numbers:
“It was a combination of good discussion, good debate and people being engaged, something that really hasn’t happened – it’s almost unprecedented to tell you the truth,” Joe Garcea, a political studies professor at the University of Saskatchewan, said.
To a large extent, Garcea said the high voter turnout can be attributed to the hard work of contenders in two ways – their ground game including door knocking, forums and phone calls as well as being active on social media.
“Perhaps what we’re seeing here is the millennials starting to be quite active in politics,” Garcea said.
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People also wanted change but based on just how tight the mayor’s race was, the new council shouldn’t try to reinvent the wheel down at city hall.
“I don’t think this was a referendum on the mayor himself in terms of whether people liked the mayor or not, it was more a question as I’ve been saying, of people feeling there needs to be an adjustment and it became an issue of who might be able to facilitate that change,” Garcea said.
“I don’t think people are looking for radical change in Saskatoon, they’re looking for some fine tuning.”
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