HALIFAX - With less than 31 hours before the polls officially close in Nova Scotia's 41st provincial election, the Director of Policy and Communications for Elections Nova Scotia (ENS) is optimistic that her office and its returning offices across the province will have success with every method of voting available to Nova Scotians this summer. 

Although Naomi Shelton says the timing of the election didn't give ENS the opportunity to investigate online voting opportunities for this election, she is pleased with the uptake of write-in ballots, rolling community polls and advance polls, all of which yielded higher results than when they were previously offered to the public in 2017. 

As of Saturday, August 14, Elections Nova Scotia had processed 9.740 write-in ballots, as compared to the 3,820 write-in ballots processed by the same point of the 2017 election campaign. As well, 106,823 votes had been cast at the returning office continuous polls, as compared to only 77,031 votes at these continuous polls four years earlier. 

Community polls also saw a spike in participation, with 24,324 votes cast at these specific polls across Nova Scotia in comparison to only 1,678 at community polls conducted in the 2017 election campaign.

The only aspect of provincial-election voting that saw a downturn from the previous election to the current one were the official advance polls, which saw 25,516 votes cast as of this past Saturday. By the same point of the 2017 election, 30,416 votes had been cast at advance polls. 

However, the numbers add up to a total of 166,403 early votes cast, which is a measured increase from the 112,944 early votes cast in the 2017 provincial campaign. Shelton expressed optimism that these numbers would help ENS achieve its goal of surpassing the 54 per cent voter turnout that accompanied the 2017 Nova Scotia election.