Voters on P.E.I. can expect a card in the mail from Elections P.E.I. in the coming days in preparation for a provincial election.

By law, an election must be held by Oct. 2, but Elections P.E.I. says it must be ready if the government calls one sooner.

Tim Garrity, P.E.I. chief electoral officer, said Elections P.E.I. is changing the way it checks voter registration.

In the past, workers would go door to door to make sure everybody who was on its list of electors was at the right address. But that proved to be costly and inefficient, he said.

So instead they are mailing out registration cards.

The new system will save about $250,000, he said.

It's not the same voter card you take to the polling station. Rather, it's to verify your name, address and other information. If the information on the card is correct, no action is required.

"But for some people, they may get a card at their household and there may be an additional name on it. They'd be like, well, I'm Tim, and it says that Sam lives here too. Well, Sam doesn't live here, so they may want to call our office and let us know. He may have been a previous tenant that never updated his address with us," Garrity said.

"So unless somebody updates their information with us, we just kind of leave them where they were during the last election."

About 58,000 households will receive the cards, which will be mailed out in three intervals beginning with the first group on Monday.