If you cast your ballot in advance of Tuesday’s provincial election, you’re one of more than 200,000 Manitobans who took advantage of early voting.
According to Elections Manitoba, voters came through in droves to select their candidates this year.
“The final number was 200,790,” Michael Ambrose of Elections Manitoba told 680 CJOB’s The Start.
“It’s not quite double, but in 2019, there were about 113,000.”
Ambrose said that last provincial election — which saw then-premier Brian Pallister and the Progressive Conservatives romp to easy re-election — attracted just over half of eligible voters.
“In 2019, we saw about 55 per cent (turnout), which is comparable to the last five or so elections, going back to 2003,” he said.
This year’s election night will be slightly different from past vote counts, as Elections Manitoba has upgraded its equipment, and many of the ballots will be counted with the new tabulators.
“The majority of ballots will be going through the vote-counting machines, and then at the close of polls on election day, we’ll run a report that gives us the tally of votes, but there is still an aspect of manual count on election night as well.”
Ambrose said polling locations without the new machines will be counted manually, but otherwise, he expects results to be in within an hour or hour-and-a-half after the polls close at 8 p.m. — and that the large number of advance votes means the results will come in “noticeably quicker.”
If you still have to vote on Tuesday, you can check out our last-minute voters’ guide for more details. Polls open at 8 a.m.
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