Elections Alberta ‘ready to deliver’ as advanced referendum polls to open this week

EDMONTON — Albertans can start trekking to the polls this week to have their say on whether it’s time to look at quitting Confederation. 19 referendum are set to open Tuesday, and if requests for mail-in ballots are any indication, there could be a record turnout. Officials at Elections Alberta say they’re ready.

“We’ve completed scenario planning, and our teams are prepared to handle any issue that may emerge,” Maia Hanrahan, a spokesperson for Elections Alberta, said this week. “We are ready to deliver.” The agency has said for months that Premier Danielle Smith’s Oct. 19 referendum, with a headlining question on whether Albertans want to stay in Canada, will be a herculean task.

About 45 million printed ballots are required, as are at least 60,000 workers to facilitate the process and hand count the votes — a requirement the agency says will mean results likely won’t be known until the early morning hours on Oct. As of Friday morning, Hanrahan said, about 44,000 people have been hired and that recruitment efforts will continue right up until voting day. “We’ve had a strong response from Albertans; and we’re grateful to them,” Hanrahan said.

Elections Alberta has also said it’s preparing for a record voter turnout of about 85 per cent. That level of voter interest was made evident when roughly 658,000 mail-in ballots were requested last month, representing roughly 20 per cent of the province’s approximately three million registered voters. Hanrahan said that as of Friday, the agency has received just over 300,000 completed mail-in ballots ahead of the Friday deadline for returning them.

The unprecedented demand for mail-in ballots wasn’t without hiccups. About 300 voters who were among the first to receive their packages in the mail opened their envelope to some of the 10 questions missing, an issue Elections Alberta said was the fault of its service provider and was remedied by sending new ballots in the mail. Other voters in the early weeks of the special ballot period reported concerns with a form that required people to declare they were voting by mail because they were unable to vote in-person.

The form threatened hefty fines for misuse of the process. Elections Alberta said the form was old, as the government had changed the rules to no longer require a reason for Albertans to vote by mail.