With the 36th day of the election campaigns closing, the Canadians are nearing the federal election day. With this, a new Parliament will be brought in, but can there be a clear winner on. 20 September?
Answering the complication of the elections, an Elections Canada spokesperson on Tuesday said that the percentage of the mail-in ballots will increase and change the timeline around this time. Given Elections Canada's ballot integrity process, the Local mail-in ballots, those who have been marked and sent to the returning officers by voters in their electron districts.
“Before they start counting those ballots, there’s a step that needs to happen and that’s called the integrity check,” Natasha Gauthier said.
That includes, among different measures, verifying whether the external envelope is signed by the voter and guaranteeing the individual has cast a ballot just a single time.
“These are all things that take some time, so we’ve said it could take up to 24 hours for the returning officers to do those checks, those verifications before they even start the count,” she added.
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The Election Canada can begin counting the mail-in ballots and also the ballots from the Canadian Armed Forces and incarcerated electors till up to 14 days before election days.
The Returning officers could start with her totalling of the ballots cast at the local advance polls an hour before the election closes on the election night.
Around 1,000,787 voting kits have been issued to electors residing within their district zone. So far 552,488 kits have been returned. Meanwhile, some 146, 925 voting kits have been sent to electors living within Canada but outside their riding, and 54,186 sent to those residing abroad.
Among the 10 ridings with the most uncommon voting form units demanded, five were chosen in 2019 by fewer votes than the number of extraordinary voting forms mentioned in 2021. This means the voting result could have a link with the factor.
For the first time, the Canada Election body is permitting the voters to bring along their mail-in ballot to their local polling station on Election Day, informed Gauthier, in case they have missed the deadline for voting. Afterwards, these ballots will be sent to the returning officer.
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She further added, “In a place like Ottawa-Vanier, well, the returning office is 1,000 kilometres from the polling location, so if the polls close at nine o’clock, those dropped off ballots aren’t going to be at the returning office at 930, they’re going to be there the next day.”
On this account, the vote counting can conclude within two to five days for the results to be out, said Gauthier. Despite this, a winner could be announced by the media beforehand. However, results to some extent should be clear enough for that to occur.
Elections Canada will be posting the results of the mail-in ballots towards the closing of each counting shift – as such, a few times each day following Sept. 20.