
Manitoba votes today. Here's what you need to know
CBC
Voters in Manitoba are heading to the polls today as municipal elections get underway across the province.
That includes people in Winnipeg, who will elect a new mayor for the first time since 2014.
Polling stations — 198 of them — opened at 8 a.m. at sites across the provincial capital and they'll be open until 8 p.m.
If you're in line before 8 p.m., you'll still get to cast your ballot even if the wait takes you past 8 p.m., senior election official and city clerk Marc Lemoine said.
While residents were allowed to visit any site to vote during advance polling, voters must go to their assigned site on election day, Lemoine said.
You can find that address in the orange box on the voter's notice you got in the mail. A sample notice the city made up as an example included an imaginary voter named Willow Rosenberg — the name of a witch from the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
"Whatever we can do to get people out to the polls, right? That's what I'm all about," Lemoine said.
If you don't have a voter's notice, you can also find out where to vote by typing your address into this page on the city's website or by calling 311, Lemoine said.
You can find more details here about how to vote and what to bring.
While a record number of people in Winnipeg already cast their ballots in advance polling, many still had yet to vote on Wednesday.
There was also an increase in the number of people voting by mail, with about 800 this year compared to 200 in the last civic election, Lemoine said.
Election officials have also already tested all the city's voting machines with 50,000 premarked ballots — and the results were perfect, Lemoine said.
"So we're very confident in terms of the results coming out of those machines," he said.
Ballot counting will start after polls close at 8 p.m., Lemoine said, beginning with advance ballots, then moving on to votes cast on election day.