REGINA -- By now, Reginans have had the opportunity to cast ballots in two elections. Walter was #JustCurious how the ballots are physically counted once the polls close.

As you can imagine, it’s a big job. I reached out to Regina’s Chief Returning Officer Jim Nichol who thankfully agreed to show us the process using a blank sheet of paper as a stand-in for a ballot. (no ballots were spoiled in the making of this segment)

You fill out your ballot and hand it to the election staff. They will collect all of the ballots at the polling station to be counted upon the closing of the polls.

Once the polls close, the election worker will take all of those ballots, and one by one, feed them through a ballot counting machine. The ballot is placed into a feeder, the feeder into the machine which takes the ballot, counts it, and collects the paper copy in a bin below.

This process is repeated again and again until all ballots have been counted. The finally tally is then forwarded to the Chief Electoral Officer (in Regina’s case that’s our friend Jim Nichol) who tabulates the finally results and shares them publically, eventually declaring a winner.

The paper ballots are kept for a short time in the event that a candidate does ask for a recount.