As the final day of voting for Saskatchewan’s election approaches, voters may be wondering when the official winners will be declared.

At a media briefing Friday, Elections Saskatchewan Chief Electoral Officer Michael Boda provided an overview of the ballot counting schedule, explaining that the first preliminary count will begin at 8 p.m. Monday, at close polling stations.

“In the first preliminary count, we will count all voting week ballots as well as all homebound and personal care facility ballots. These are the 369 licensed nursing homes that we allowed people to vote in,” he explained.

“This count has always happened this way after the election, on the last day of voting.”

The voting week began on Tuesday October 22 and polling stations closed on Monday October 28 at 8 p.m.

The counting of ballots will take place over a 12-day period, with the second preliminary count taking place on October 30 and the final count on November 9.

The second preliminary count will include the absentee ballot that will be received by Saturday, October 26.

“These will be counted centrally here in Regina, as they were in 2020,” Boda said.

The final count will verify and count the remaining ballots.

“The final electoral count will be done in two locations: at the returning office and in central Regina. Returning officers’ offices will verify the numbers generated from the first preliminary count. They will not count any new ballots at the returning officer’s office. It’s a vetting process,” Boda said.

“Meanwhile, the central count in Regina will count mail-in ballots received from Oct. 27 through Nov. 7, two days before the final count, as well as ballots from hospitals, remand centers and , where applicable, from the voters’ polling stations. which have been temporarily relocated.

Boda stressed the importance of accuracy and transparency during the counting process.

“Elections Saskatchewan wants votes to be counted correctly and accurately, and we will take the time necessary to do so. This is what is most important in this context,” he said.

“Only after the final count will we know which candidates were selected by their voters.”

Boda said the reasoning behind the 12-day vote counting and verification process is to ensure the integrity of the process.

“No one has the right to vote twice in this province. We know that and we’ve never had a problem with it, but it’s part of integrity, which is we’re going to count the ballots in person first and then when we count “Through mail-in ballots, we are able to determine whether an individual voted a second time,” Boda said.

Although all ballots will be counted by hand, Boda said election officials in the province’s major population areas will use electronic voting books, which are only used to cross out the names of registered voters when they arrive to vote.

“Electronic poll books are portable computers with specialized software that allows us to replace the pencils and rulers that were used to cross off voters from a very thick list of voters, as you already have seen before, and they are electronic and from afar. manage the electoral list more precisely for us. They allow us to handle a much larger volume of voters,” he said.