July 24, 2015
Table of Contents
Targeted door-to-door enumeration has concluded, and we are in the process of receiving the confirmation booklets. We want to thank everyone for all of your hard work. We look forward to continuing to work with all of you as we continue on with the remainder of the voter registration activities. Work on targeted enumeration for high mobility areas, such as near universities, will be completed closer to the general election.
Response to the voter confirmation notices sent to the majority of households in Saskatchewan has exceeded our expectations. Voter records are being updated and these changes will be sent to Elections Canada. Elections Canada will use this information to update the voter records they maintain for use in federal elections.
If you have any questions regarding the enumeration and voter registration, please contact Jennifer Colin at (306) 787-4061 or by email at [email protected].
Following the completion of targeted door-to-door enumeration, Elections Saskatchewan’s (ESK) attention turns to ensuring the accuracy of poll keys.
As you may be aware, poll keys are the indexes of all of the addresses associated with a polling division. The poll key is organized by street name and address range, and is used by our election officials to determine the polling division of the voter. In past elections poll keys were produced manually. ESK has created computer-generated poll keys based on available mapping data.
Ensuring the accuracy of poll keys is of critical importance to ESK and will be a key activity over the coming weeks. The poll key review will impact FLT members with constituency boundaries located in larger cities and smaller municipalities that are divided into more than one polling division.
Returning Officers will be given the poll keys for their constituency next week. A poll key review process will need to be done in order to verify accuracy. More details regarding the poll key review will be sent to support this work.
ESK’s head office staff received thousands of pages of pre-writ documentation from the FLT. We are working hard to review the information. As we work towards approving returning office locations and polling site locations, we are committed to ensuring accessibility for all of Saskatchewan’s voters. As such, we will be conducting accessibility poll site reviews on an as-needed basis. The poll site review work will be led by a Supervisory Returning Officer (SRO). Your SRO will be able to provide additional details regarding the reviews next week.
The review of the pre-writ assignments is a major project. We may need to contact FLT members to gather additional details about the assignment or the constituency. This information assists us with the decision-making process. Please also continue to check your email as we may request additional information related to this work.
During the remaining summer months, the FLT will be engaged in continued preparations for a November election. In addition to the pre-writ assignment clarifications, head office is working with the FLT to complete the poll key and site accessibility reviews.
We encourage you to directly contact your SRO about any upcoming work. We also encourage you to actively check your e-mail messages on your ESK email account. Many additional messages will be coming in the next few weeks regarding election planning, readiness, and next steps to be completed.
We thank you for all of your hard work completed to date. The continued efforts of the FLT are key to successful general election preparations.
Preparing for the 28th General Election is the largest project in the province. ESK recently held a couple of training conferences, one in April 2015 dedicated to the pre-writ assignments, and another in May 2015 dedicated to enumeration. Ensuring that the FLT is prepared to run the general election in their constituencies is a top priority.
With this priority in mind, we have another training conference scheduled for the following dates:
The above dates are contingent on delivering the 28th General Election on November 2, 2015. If Saskatchewan’s general election is delayed until April 2016, these training events will be rescheduled for the following dates:
This upcoming training conference is for all members of the FLT. Automation Co-ordinators are also required to attend day two of the event. The training will be dedicated to event readiness and all the topics we haven’t covered in previous training conferences: candidate nominations, training poll officials, voting procedures, vote counting, issuing and returning the writ, and others. More details will be provided in August.