Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

IQALUIT (Feb 15/99) - When the Nunavut election polls close at 8 p.m. across the three time zones later today, the fun will really begin for all of the election officials involved.

David Hamilton, the chief returning officer of Elections NWT, said the most important task at hand will be to count the ballots.

"The deputy returning officers in the polling stations will start counting the votes and then they'll communicate that information to the returning officers in each of the 19 ridings," said Hamilton.

The returning officers will then send those results to the Elections Nunavut office in Iqaluit where they will be verified and forwarded to Election Central at Inuksuk high school.

Hamilton said assuming there will be no storms across the territory, unofficial results would start pouring in by 9 p.m. (ET).

Once the votes have been counted and the unofficial winners declared, Hamilton explained that there is a 10-day period after polling day when a recount can be ordered or requested if there are problems or if one candidate beat out another by a small percentage of votes.

"Each returning officer has established a specific day for verifying the results. They verify the figures and numbers and see if they balance out and that's called the official edition."

Hamilton said that once that had been completed, the returning officers would return the writ to him and the official winners would be free to be sworn in to the legislature.

"If all goes well, most of the official editions will be finished by the 20th of February and they'll become the members of elect for the Nunavut legislative assembly."

Words of advice

Nunavut Tunngavik president Jose Kusugak encouraged Nunavut residents last week to get out and vote during Monday's election.

"This is the day we have fought for. Never mind April 1 -- on Monday, it will be one on one for each resident of Nunavut," said Kusugak in a press release from his office.

He explained that people had no right to complain about the elected body once it was in power unless they cast a ballot and played a role in choosing the leaders.

"If you want to take credit for a good government or complain about what it is doing, you should be involved now in choosing who you want to represent you."

Kusugak also advised the soon-to-be elected officials to stay on the straight and narrow.

"The right path means instilling a high personal standard for yourself. We and the voters of Nunavut need leaders with a clean and sober mind."

Construction moving along

Tagak Curley reported last week that many of the construction projects in several of Nunavut's communities had been completed ahead of schedule.

"There are only about six locations left that we still have to clear," said Curley, the president of the Nunavut Construction Corporation.

Mandated to build necessary infrastructure in 11 Nunavut communities, Curley said that NCC had also managed to push up the completion date in those remaining hamlets to the end of February.

He added that the office complexes in Cambridge Bay and Arviat would be finished by the end of March.

Volunteers needed

Calling all volunteers.

Nunavut's legislative assembly is looking for volunteers to assist in its first sitting on April 1, 1999. While the exact details were still in the process of being ironed out, a government official said they wanted to start the ball rolling by collecting names.

For more information or to register as a volunteer, people are asked to call 979-6770.