‘This Isn’t about Evidence.’ Alberta’s Costly, Confusing Voting Changes

Verna Milligan is 93 — “and a half,” she stresses — and is a highly engaged, informed and astute consumer of city, provincial and federal political news.

The former City of Edmonton librarian has voted in every election at every level since she and her late husband Jack moved to Alberta in 1960.

A regular Tyee reader, Milligan reached out after recently reading a story published by a media outlet. The story said citizens had to register online by Aug. 15 to be eligible to vote in municipal elections, including Edmonton’s, in October.

“I read it and thought, ‘That is pretty scary,’” Milligan said.

“That is why I sent it to a journalist like yourself to say, ‘Hey, what is happening here? How many people aren't going to be able to do this? How many people are totally unaware of this?’

“And it is in the middle of August, when people are on holidays, and they are certainly not thinking of the civic election. And it just seemed all wrong.”

The story Milligan read was, to be charitable, confusing. She and hundreds of thousands of other Albertans are already registered to vote provincially, and that information is being shared with the City of Edmonton.

The city simply wants people to check if their voter registration information is accurate. They can still vote if they don’t check, or even if their information is inaccurate, and they don’t need to register. They only need to bring valid identification when they vote.

The confusion is the byproduct of the United Conservative Party’s Bill 20, the Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act.

Rammed through in October, the bill imposes major changes on municipal elections.

For big cities like Edmonton and Calgary, the legislation creates a logistical nightmare for administering the vote, while offloading millions of dollars in additional costs to their taxpayers.

The changes will significantly delay the release of results and potentially disenfranchise some voters and reduce voter turnout, which is generally weak in Alberta.

“Skeptics could be forgiven for maybe thinking that is part of the design,” said University of Alberta political scientist Jared Wesley, who has argued the voter ID provisions of the legislation will needlessly deny some Albertans the right to vote.

“They want to create some confusion around who gets to vote, and to limit the electorate in a way that advantages the government.”

Doing away with electronic counters

The bill eliminates the use of electronic tabulators to count votes. In an interview with CBC’s Edmonton AM morning show in April 2024, former municipal affairs minister Ric McIver admitted there was no evidence of any issues with the tabulators.

“This isn't about evidence. This is about the confidence of people,” McIver said.

The only major instance of voting irregularity in recent Alberta history was the well-documented voter fraud in the UCP leadership race that elected Jason Kenney. In that same race, Kenney ran a so-called kamikaze candidate.

In December 2021, McIver acted to limit an attempt by some of his fellow UCP MLAs to amend a bill that they said would allow wealthy donors to bulk purchase memberships.

Current UCP Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams last week issued a warning to big municipalities to stay away from DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — programs and policies like banning plastic straws that he considered to be non-issues and a waste of money.

Williams told the Macleod Gazette that if big municipalities “stay in their lanes, do their jobs and do them well, I have no interest in getting involved.”

“But if they’re way off in left field, making up all sorts of problems that don’t exist instead of paying attention to the urgent needs of their residents and of all Albertans as hubs, community centres and commercial centres for the entire province, then the province is going to step in.”

The Tyee emailed Williams his quoted statement and asked how it squares with the elimination of tabulators, which is not evidence based and will cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

“The time and cost to manually count ballots are outweighed by the increased confidence in election results,” Williams said in an email.

“Requiring all ballots to be counted by hand will ensure that all Albertans can trust the methods and results of their local elections, which is better for democracy.”

Voting expert Aleksander Essex is an associate professor of software engineering at Western University in London, Ontario. He said the UCP did not have to eliminate tabulators to achieve the trust in voting they claimed was needed.

Essex said many jurisdictions in the United States use tabulators but also conduct “risk-limiting audits” with candidates’ representatives present.

“And that provides the sort of definitive evidence that the tabulators worked as intended,” he said. “That is just a pro forma thing that is done. You don't have to have a whiff of fraud, or anything like that, to do it. You just do it automatically. And so I don't think that is controversial.”

Experts sees similarities to US far-right policies

Wesley said the elimination of tabulators is one of several far-right policies taken straight from red-state Republicans or promoted by Fox News, seemingly to appease Take Back Alberta, the fringe group within the UCP that ousted former premier Kenney and now controls the UCP board.

“I just think it is a pure reflection of a populist approach to governance, that there is a small group of people that know what is best, and they don't feel like they need to consult people about how those decisions are going to impact them,” Wesley said.

In an interview, Edmonton city clerk Aileen Giesbrecht, who is also the city’s returning officer, said there were “high-level discussions” with provincial government staff about the changes, but “we received the paperwork and the legislation the same day the public did.

Edmonton has used tabulators for more than two decades, and Giesbrecht said she was unaware of any issues or complaints.

The new legislation will require all 344 municipalities in Alberta to establish and maintain their own voters’ lists. Elections Alberta provided Edmonton with a list of about 700,000 names, but Giesbrecht said she believes that is incomplete due to population growth.

Millions more in election costs

Municipalities administer the vote for the mayor, councillors and also the public and Catholic school board trustees. That was covered by one ballot with tabulators, which were monitored by scrutineers. Now there will be three separate ballots and ballot boxes.

Giesbrecht said the city has had to hire another about 40 temporary staff to interpret and implement changes. And the city will need to hire an additional at least 1,000 temporary workers for hand counting.

That means they will need to recruit, vet and train about 4,000 people to fill about 5,000 jobs. (She expects some temporary staff will work in both advance polls and on election day.)

This will cost Edmonton taxpayers about $5.8 million for the initial startup costs and another about $3.1 million annually.

Using tabulators, Edmonton voters could expect final results often within hours. For this next election, counting will begin as soon as the polls close on Monday, Oct. 20. Giesbrecht said there could be some preliminary results that same evening.

But she expects counting will continue into Tuesday and the final official vote results won’t be released until Friday, and “we will only release the results once we're confident that they are correct.”

With the rise of conspiracy thinking and extreme political tribalism, how will the city vet temporary workers to ensure the vote isn’t tampered with?

Giesbrecht said the city has a rigorous vetting process that adheres to existing recruitment standards. There will be extensive training and all temporary staff will be required to swear an oath so they understand what is expected of them.

There will also be safeguards for who has access to blank and completed ballots, and ballots will always be counted in public, never in private.

Another obvious question was whether Giesbrecht, as city clerk, believed hand counting of ballots would be as trustworthy as tabulators.

She said both are equally trustworthy but confirmed the city will have to spend millions of dollars to hire thousands of people and create and implement an entire system of checks to make them equal.

“The integrity of the process and the integrity of the results are incredibly important,” she said. “And so we are hiring extra staff to make sure that count tables will be supervised, as well as multiple verifications as each ballot box is counted.”

With less than 100 days to the election, the city is preparing to roll out a media blitz and a home mail-out of voter information cards to ensure people understand where to vote and what identification is required.

“We will be doing everything we can to make sure that Edmontonians know how to exercise their right to vote.”

If you have any information for this story, or information for another story, please contact Charles Rusnell in confidence via email.