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Polls open at 7 a.m. Tuesday in the Point Douglas provincial byelection that's critical to the NDP's hope of rebuilding.

The polls close at 8 p.m. in an inner-city riding that has long been an NDP stronghold.

That was then, but is it now?

Last time around, former cabinet minister Kevin Chief won 57.1 per cent of the vote, but less than eight months later he gave up the seat and joined the private sector, leaving the New Democrats with only 12 seats and denying the party a respected member who had widely been expected to be a frontrunner for the NDP's leadership.

Point Douglas had one of Manitoba's lowest voter turnouts at 42.5 per cent, and byelection voter turnout has traditionally been exceptionally low, especially when no other office is on the ballot, but all three major parties have been running well-backed and bitter campaigns.

Bernadette Smith, a longtime community activist and educator, is running for the NDP. Smith co-foundedthe Manitoba Coalition of Families of Missing and Murdered Women her sister Claudette Osborne has been missing for nine years.

The Liberals finished a distant second in Point Douglas last year, but winning the riding would give the three-member Liberal caucus party status in the legislature; they're running John Cacayuran, a former civil servant now working for Liberal MP MaryAnn Mihychuk. The Progressive Conservative party hasfielded electrician and business owner Jodi Moskal, who would be a welcome addition to a caucus that has only eight women among its 40 members.

Also running are Sabrina Koehn Binesi for the Greens, Communist Frank Komarniski, and Manitoba Party's Gary Marshall.

Complaints and allegations of election violations have been flying. The NDP accused the Tory government of continuing to tout government programs after the writ dropped, the Conservatives say that New Democrat MLAs have been improperly hanging out and possibly campaigning at advance polling stations, and the NDP has accused the Liberals of paying people to remove NDP signs.

Elections Manitoba said Monday the commissioner of elections has up to a year to decide whether to launch an investigation.There is no specific time period for an investigation to be completed or a determination made.

Full details on who is eligible to vote, where to vote and how to vote if you're not on the voters' list, are available at http://www.electionsmanitoba.ca.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

More here:
Point Douglas byelection critical for NDP, important to Liberals - Winnipeg Free Press