Elections Sask. suggests moving next provincial vote to spring 2021

Saskatchewan's chief electoral officer says there's a problem with the election dates coming up in three years.

There are municipal elections set for Oct. 28, 2020. There's also a provincial election set for five days later on Nov. 2.

In a recent discussion paper,Chief Electoral Officer Michael Bodasays that would create administrative challenges, an increase in election costs, and public confusion. For example, advance voting for the provincial election would happen on the same day as the municipal election.

"Municipal and provincial elections have different eligibility rules," said Tim Kydd, senior director ofoutreach and communications for Elections Saskatchewan.

"You register differently, different voting locations, dates, times, the ID you show it would be real confusing for the voters."

It would also be a challenge to recruit enough poll workers, as both elections would be drawing from the same pool of staff.

3 options, including extending term

Kydd says they're looking at several options, but the one recommended by the chief electoral officer is to extend the term of the current provincial government to April 2021. After that, elections would settle back into their legislated cycles with no overlap.

"We feel that one of them is most workable, and that would be to move the provincial election back to the spring of 2021."

That would mean Brad Wall's government would be in for a full five years since the last election. A spokesperson for the premier's office says they would be reluctant to go that long.

Another option would be to move the municipal elections to the spring, but that would disrupt a municipal election cycle that's still in transition, and Elections Saskatchewan also fears spring elections in rural municipalities during seeding would not be well-received.

3 elections in a year?

A third option would be to move the provincial election earlier, to the spring of 2020, but that would mean the scheduling conflict with the municipal elections would then continue every four years. It would also mean that within 12 months, between the fall of 2019 and fall of 2020, Saskatchewan voters would go to the polls three times: for federal, provincial and municipal elections.

The chief electoral officer says ideally there should be just one election per year to reduce voter fatigue.

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The most recent provincial election was originally scheduled for the fall of 2015 but was moved to the spring of 2016 to avoid conflict with the October 2015 federal election.

No decisions on changing the elections schedule have been made yet.