Elections N.B. gears up for election with voting equipment heading to returning offices across the province

It’s been a pretty consistent question over the last year in New Brunswick - will an election be called early?

It was close to going ahead last fall, so close that Elections N.B. started getting voting equipment in order, packing it up on pallets, readying it to be shipped to all corners of the province.

But it wasn’t to be and, since then, much of that equipment has sat in the Elections N.B. warehouse in Fredericton – until now.

“This is the big show and it's good to see it finally get going, because we really have to feel like we've been sitting on the edge of our seats for basically a year, wondering, if we would get to this day or things would happen a little sooner,” said Kim Poffenroth, New Brunswick’s chief electoral officer.

Some of the equipment has had to be fine-tuned or changed. But for the most part, the work done last year has helped with the preparation this year. Those efforts made for a smooth Friday, with staff loading the equipment onto tractor-trailers, and watching as it finally departed to returning office locations booked across New Brunswick.

The province is now less than three weeks from when the writ is expected to drop on Sept. 19.

Two advanced polls are scheduled: Oct. 12 and Oct. 15. and election day is Oct. 21.

“So the next few weeks will be the returning officers having an opportunity to bring in staff, train them, get their offices set up on the date that the writs are issued on Sept. 19th,” she said.

“That's the first day that returning offices will be open to the public and voters will be able to go into their local returning office and vote there any time during the period.”

It normally operates with a staff of 20, but Elections N.B. will balloon to almost 5,000 employees during this time. They have a budget of about $10 million to make a provincial election happen.

Could an election still be called early? Likely not, says political scientist J.P. Lewis.

“I think you probably want to give prospective voters a bit of time to breathe. You know, whether they're getting back to normal work cycles after vacations or kids going off to school,” he said.

And Lewis adds, like Elections N.B. staff constantly trying to prepare for when the call is made, politicians haven’t let off the gas either.

“I believe that we're in a permanent campaign. Parties and governments behave as if they're fighting an election at all times,” he said. “So, you know, the timing of when we enter that official period, I think every new election cycle might mean less because parties will definitely behave as if they're campaigning outside of that clear writ period.”

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