In an interview with CTV News, an Elections Canada spokesperson said that it may take five days to process all the mail-in ballots to determine a winner.
According to the spokesperson, the counting of local mail-in ballots will not even begin until September 21 — meaning there is a zero percent chance that voters can know the outcome of the election on the night of the election or even the following day.
“Before they start counting those ballots,” spokesperson Natasha Gauthier began, “there’s a step that needs to happen, and that’s called the integrity check.”
This step includes checking for signatures on the outer envelope to make sure a voter only voted once.
“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 said.
Conversely, Elections Canada can begin counting mail-in ballots from Canadian Armed Forces and incarcerated voters 14 days before election day.
Votes cast on election day can be counted one hour before polls close.
Additionally, Gauthier said that voters could bring their mail-in ballots to local polling stations if they missed their chance to cast their vote. However, these ballots need to be sent to the returning officer.
“In a place like Nunavut, 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 9:30, they’re going to be there the next day,” she said.
Due to such delays, Gauthier said it would take at least two days to finish counting the votes, but it could take as long as five days to know the election results.
Elections Canada says it will post the results of each counting session two to three times a day after Election Day to ease voters’ concerns.
