Elections Alberta plans to recommend legislative changes following delays in counting ballots and reporting unofficial results from the province’s Oct. 19 referendum.
In an Oct. 24 statement, the agency outlined why it was unable to report all unofficial results for the referendum’s 10 questions within the legislated 48-hour deadline, citing “specific and exceptional challenges” at several voting locations.
The agency said it would propose amendments to provincial laws governing manual ballot counts and deadlines for reporting referendum results. The recommendations follow procedural errors at several voting locations, where workers did not separate ballots by voting area, forcing election officials to manually sort ballots to determine how votes should be reported.
Elections Alberta acknowledged on Oct. 22 that it could not complete the hand count within the legislated 48-hour deadline, despite having more than 47,000 election workers involved in administering the referendum.
“Delays in receiving and recording unofficial counts are due to procedural errors made in voting places on Election Day,” it said.
Elections Alberta reported more than 20.5 million valid votes cast across the referendum’s 10 questions, each on a separate ballot. Advance voting accounted for roughly 40 percent of votes, while election day voting accounted for 34 percent.
Albertans voted overwhelmingly to remain in Canada, with roughly 75 percent rejecting a proposal to hold a binding referendum on separation. Voters also supported five questions related to immigration, access to provincially funded services, and proof of citizenship for voting, while rejecting four questions involving proposed constitutional changes.
Counting and Reporting Problems
Elections Alberta said that a single polling location can serve several voting areas within an electoral division. However, legislative changes introduced in 2025 required officials to report election results separately for each voting area rather than combining them by polling location.
To comply, Elections Alberta said it provided polling locations with separate ballot boxes for each voting area, along with training and instructions. Some locations served as many as 11 voting areas, but several used only one set of ballot boxes for all areas.
Returning officers’ teams then separated most ballots using the initials of the election officers who issued them, which appeared on the back of each ballot.
“This is a very time-consuming process,” Elections Alberta said. “The legislated requirement to hand-count all votes means this process is entirely manual.”
Elections Alberta said it could not separate ballots by voting area in some locations, forcing teams to combine the counts into a single voting area for reporting purposes. However, the agency maintained that it accounted for all ballots and included them in the unofficial results.
Elections Alberta said all voting places that followed the correct procedures reported their unofficial results within the legislated 48-hour timeline, and all voting places reported some unofficial results.
“These delays are not a result of insufficient counting staff,” the agency stated.
Elections Alberta announced that the unofficial count was completed at 9:14 p.m. on Oct. 24. The agency is scheduled to release official results on Oct. 29, after returning officers verify the counts and supporting documentation. Recounts may be conducted if officials cannot reconcile the results.
Elections Alberta said in an email it was still in “active event mode” as its teams worked to prepare the official results. It said it would make a full referendum report available later, after its internal review of records and debrief was complete. It also referred to its Oct. 24 news release about its goal of pushing for legislative changes.
Premier Comments on Counting
Premier Danielle Smith said during her weekend radio show that the province needed to review the problems that delayed the reporting of referendum results before deciding whether legislative changes are necessary.
Smith questioned why ballot counting did not begin at 8 p.m., why some polling stations counted votes but did not report them, and why others waited until all 10 referendum questions had been counted before releasing results. She pointed to Quebec, where officials also count ballots by hand but have reported election results much more quickly.
“Let’s not presume that the issue was the tabulator,” Smith said. “So, let’s just do a look and see if there’s other things that could have been done to make people have more confidence in the outcome.”
The premier said she wants Elections Alberta to appear before an independent committee to explain the delays and wants to hear from those concerned about the process. She added that the government could introduce legislative changes in the spring if a review determines they are necessary.
