Municipal and school board elections proceed in Regina despite snow

Although the snowstorm that has been blowing through Saskatchewan has impacted some municipal and school board elections, Regina’s polls are open.

“We did get snow last evening and this morning, but hats off to our road crews that have been out there working very hard. The streets are more than passable. They’ve made sure that the schools and the civic centres and the churches where polling is underway have been cleared,” Jim Nicol, the chief returning officer for Regina’s 2020 municipal and school board elections, told reporters Monday.

Nicol said he visited 10 polling stations, which opened at 9 a.m., on Monday morning and they were all “fairly busy.”

There were about 40 people in line at St. Matthews School in the city’s south end, he added.

“People are basically positive. People are trudging through the snow,” Nicol said. “They have their masks on and everything is well.”

Due to the severity of the weather conditions in some parts of the province, Government Relations Minister Lori Carr issued an order to allow municipalities’ returning officers to postpone elections.

“We would have considered it if we had perhaps been hit by the storm as it was in Swift Current,” Nicol said.

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While Nicol said he cannot recall a time when a city election has been so impacted by weather, the city was monitoring conditions over the weekend and got in touch with road crews.

Regina’s polls will close at 8 p.m. Anyone in line at that time will be permitted to cast a ballot.

People who can’t make it out of their homes due to the weather are advised to contact the elections office.

“We will make every effort to get one of our elections workers to take out a ballot to those people who are stranded in their homes,” Nicol said.

Elections Regina says 14,374 people cast their ballots at advance polls last week.

Additionally, it received about 6,000 mail-in ballot applications and at least 3,300 were returned prior to election day.

“We’re in great shape,” Nicol said.