Agenda for June 19 RPP Meeting and two by-election items
Annual RPP Meeting – Agenda
With our annual RPP meeting about two and a half weeks away, I wanted to provide you with a copy of a “tentative” agenda for our day – please see attached. I do not expect any major changes from what we currently have, but there may be slight changes to session length or other minor details as we refine and finalize the day.
In the afternoon, you will see that we have two sessions from Ilona Dougherty. Ms. Dougherty is the managing director of the Youth & Innovation Project at the University of Waterloo and is a leading expert on Millennials and Generation Z. She is also one of the founders of Apathy is Boring, a national charity dedicated to supporting and educating young people to enable them to become active, contributing citizens to Canada’s democracy. As you can see on the agenda, Ms. Dougherty will lead us through two sessions – the first will be a traditional presentation-style talk while the second will be a more interactive discussion.
In speaking with Ms. Dougherty, we agreed that, if at all possible, it would be extremely beneficial for each registered political party to bring along a younger member of their team. Our goal is twofold: first, we thought this would provide an opportunity for you to build capacity into a younger member of your political party team; second, having some members of this age group as part of the conversation around the table will help to enrich the session. The individual, who can be in addition to the two spots reserved for the Chief Official Agent and one guest, would be welcome to join us around 12:30 for lunch before participating in our afternoon sessions and then joining our group for dinner in the evening. If you have a young, “up-and-comer” in your party that might benefit from this discussion, please contact Noel Selinger (noel.selinger@elections.sk.ca) with details.
Regina Northeast By-Election – Two Items
While I have not begun to formally communicate with you regarding the pending Regina Northeast by-election, I do have two short items that I wanted to share.
First, should your prospective candidates or their campaign teams in Regina Northeast encounter individuals who wish to register to vote (or inquire about their registration status), we have two options available. One would be for the individual to call our office at 1-877-958-8683 where we would be happy to assist them. The second option would be to download a form from our website at https://www.elections.sk.ca/voterregistration/ and then return it to our office. We will be opening our online voter registration portal at an appropriate time, but the longer we leave it closed to public access, the more automatic updates we can make using data obtained through information sharing agreements. This greatly improves the quality of the list. This is the same process that we have followed in previous by-elections, but I wanted to ensure all of you were aware of how we were planning to move forward.
The second item has to do with the polling divisions that will be used in this by-election, which will be slightly different from what was in place during the April 2016 general election.
These changes are as follows. What was previously polling division 1 and 2 will be combined into polling division 1. This, of course, means that all of the previous polling division numbers will move down by one (previous polling division three will now be two, etc.). The total number of polling divisions will remain the same, as what was previously polling division 44 will be split into two. Updated maps are available on our website at https://www.elections.sk.ca/voters/maps/.
We can discuss both of these items in more detail at our June 19 meeting, if you wish.
Sincerely,
Dr. Michael Boda
Chief Electoral Officer
Province of Saskatchewan