Polls to open in 22 districts on Saturday A topical sea shanty It's been an interesting — and quite busy — few days of election watch in Newfoundland and Labrador. It's been so busy, in fact, that we had to park our daily run of the Election Notebook to focus on the pandemic response, as COVID-19 cases in the St. John's-metro area drastically spiked this week, throwing all plans out the window. But with the spike in cases came some complications for the election, a two-pronged attack on the news cycle. Staffing problems, related to the influx of new cases, began to surface from Elections NL returning offices in the metro area, while PC Leader Ches Crosbie and NDP Leader Alison Coffin were once again critical of Liberal Leader Andrew Furey's snap election call. Furey called the delay a "welcomed pause."