March 9, 2016: Writ Period Bulletin

Today’s Bulletin offers additional clarification on the processes involved in enumerating Personal Care Facilities.

UPDATE: Enumerating Mobile and Special Polls – Personal Care Facilities

Now that the writ of election has been issued you can begin enumerating the personal care facilities (PCFs) within your constituency. For this you have been authorized to hire up to two enumerators. You will have already been in contact with the administrators of these facilities and you should have had some preliminary discussions about the process that will work best for the facility and its residents. There may need to be different approaches taken in different facilities.

  • Depending on the facility and the level of care required of its residents the enumerator assigned to the facility may be able to set up a voter registration desk in the lobby or they may need to go room to room to enumerate voters.
  • Again, depending on what works best for the facility and its residents, your enumerators may also be able to obtain some of the information they need from the administration of the facility.
  • However, under no circumstances should your enumerators simply expect/demand to receive a list of all the residents and their birth dates from the facility administration. This would be a serious violation of the residents’ personal privacy.

 

Enumeration Process in Brief

Elections Saskatchewan will be sending you a list by the end of the day Wednesday March 9 of all of the voters we have registered in your Mobile and Special polls.

  • The enumerator will take this list to the facility and when they enumerate, they will check the list entry to confirm the voter still resides there.
  • If the voter has moved or is deceased, this should be noted beside the voter’s name.
  • The names of deceased voters and voters who have moved should be marked as “deceased” or “moved”.

We are hoping the lists we send will be fairly complete, but your enumerators will, no doubt, need to be registering some voters at the personal care facilities. This will be done using the E-207 Confirmation Record.

  • Each page of this form can accommodate the enumeration of up to 8 new voters. Enumerators will not need to leave a yellow copy of the E-207 with the voter.
  • Enumerators will record the facility address information on the top of the form. This will be the same for all residents.
  • Enumerators will record the voter’s name, birth date and gender and check off the citizenship column of the form.
  • The voter’s room number will be recorded under the Occupation column, so the heading “Occupation” should be crossed off and replaced with “Room#”.

Note: Residents of personal care facilities are required to provide birth date information, just like every other voter. We need to ensure the accuracy of voter information.

As the RO, you will need to manage this process by checking with the facility administration to see if they have permission to provide this personal information for any of the residents to ensure that the voter information being collected is accurate.

Please remember, we are in these facilities as employees of Elections Saskatchewan. We need to be professional and work with the administration to conduct the enumeration in the manner that works best for them, while obtaining the information we require for our voters list. The administration of these facilities may want us to go room to room; set up a registration desk; or they may provide us with personal information that they have permission to share.

If the enumeration of a particular Mobile or Special poll takes place over the course of more than one day, don’t wait until all the enumeration in the poll is finished before sending in completed Confirmation Records. The completed E-207 forms should be scanned and e-mailed to [email protected] daily. Once the enumeration of a poll is complete, a copy of the annotated list of voters should also be scanned and e-mailed to [email protected]. Enumeration of Mobile and Special polls should be completed by March 18.

If your enumerators experience any difficulties obtaining cooperation with the PCFs in your constituency and you need a letter from Elections Saskatchewan explaining the importance of registering voters and the authority we have for collecting this information from their residents, contact the Support Desk and we would be pleased to provide one. Enumerators should carry a copy of their E-204 Appointment of Enumerator by Returning Officer/Oath of Enumerator form as ID.