Despite facing a pandemic and a big snowstorm, Regina’s municipal election went off without a hitch.
With Saskatoon and Swift Current postponing their elections until later in the week due to snow, City Clerk Jim Nicol says delaying Regina’s election was never in discussion.
“We worked very closely with our roadways crew over the weekend, we knew where they were going to be, we knew the road priorities, and we also worked with them to ensure that the polling stations would be cleared and accessible,” said Nicol. “We were very confident, we’re a pretty hardy lot here. It didn’t appear to us that is was anything we couldn’t manage through, and I think the voters showed that.”
With the second wave of COVID-19 hitting the city, there were a record number of mail-in ballot with nearly 6,000 applications received.
Nicol gave credit to all the election workers for facing the challenges of the pandemic and delivering the result they wanted.
“We can plan for anything, but just the scale of which we had to ensure that we had protective equipment for people,” said Nicol. “The hundreds and hundreds of bottles of hand sanitizer, and laminated privacy sleeves, I mean, when you’re taking that out to 40 different polls over a week and a half, it’s daunting.”
After the technical difficulties the city faced on election night 2016, Nicol was relieved none of those issues plagued the results Monday.
“It feels great, we vowed in 2016 that we were not going to experience that problem again, and I’m glad we didn’t,” said Nicol. “Again, there was a few anxious moments because everyone was thinking this was immediate, but as the City Manager reminded me, they’re still counting votes in the U.S, so hang in there.”
With 6 new members of council, including Mayor-Elect Sandra Masters, coming in, Nicol says the next few weeks will be fairly busy getting ready for the swearing-in ceremony on Monday, November 23rd.
