October 26, 2020. Elections Saskatchewan wants voters and other key electoral stakeholders to be aware that election night results may appear slightly different tonight.

“One of our goals moving into an election where COVID-19 is present has been to encourage the use of all three primary voting opportunities—vote by mail, advance, and election day voting—to ensure greater safety at the polls,” said Dr. Michael Boda, Chief Electoral Officer of Saskatchewan.  “It seems likely that we have been successful in this regard—more than 61,000 voters applied to vote by mail (up from around 4,000 in 2016) and more than 185,000 opted to vote at one of five days of advance voting (up from just over 111,000).”

After 8 p.m. tonight, ballots from advance voting, election day and personal care facilities will be counted. Election day polls with smaller-than-normal ballot tallies will likely report earlier in the evening while advance polls with many more ballots will certainly take longer to count and report.

“Reports have told us that Election Day polls have been steady but there have been no significant lineups or crowds, which is the safe voting environment we had hoped for in planning this electoral event,” said Dr. Boda. “Although the gap between results reporting on election day and advance polls is not unexpected, the gap may be longer this evening.”

Breakdown of how ballots will be counted

First Preliminary Count election results from tonight at https://results.elections.sk.ca/

Elections Saskatchewan (ESK) is the province’s nonpartisan election management body and an independent office of the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan. ESK directs and supervises the administration of provincial electoral events, including the 2020 provincial election.

Information for voters, workers, media, candidates and parties at www.elections.sk.ca.

For more information contact:

Tim Kydd
Senior Director, Outreach & Communications
Elections Saskatchewan
306.537.9211
[email protected]