With the federal election less than three weeks away, an amendment to a City of Kamloops policy, hopes to make it easier for people to get to the polls, at least for some of us.

The 2016 policy let city council approve free transit for voters but each election required it’s own approval until now.

On the NL Morning News, Kamloops city councillor Mike O’Reilly said streamlining the policy will make it easier down the road.

“What happens is that it had to come back to council every election and be voted on,” he said. “This gives it a blanket opportunity that it’s free transit on municipal, provincial and federal elections rather than having come back to council every year and asking for that, it’s just part of the actual transit policy.”

As far as HandiDART, O’Reilly said that it’s not included at this point.

“So for the everyday bus riders it’s included but HandiDART isn’t so that’s something that we’ve asked staff to back to the drawing board,” O’Reilly added. “We’re going to be looking at that so that people that use that program can still get the right to vote as well and we think that’s incredibly important in a democratic society that everybody had the opportunity to vote.”

The councillor stressed the importance of free bus fares on election day.

“It gets more and more people to the polls and you know people have said they don’t vote because they can’t get there.”

“So, you know it’s not just we think it might work, people have said I want to vote but I can’t. So, you know if we can remove more barrier for people to get to the polls, I thinks that’s incredibly important.”

The federal election is Oct. 21.