Following the passing of Bill 20, the City of Lethbridge says higher costs and longer ballot counting times will result in significant changes to the city’s next municipal election.
These changes are not bringing in new issues, however, instead, the city says they are being brought back in time, to the 1990s.
“Prohibiting tabulators, which we’ve used since 1992, therefore, we’ll be hand-counting ballots instead of using tabulators. Therefore, the results will be significantly delayed. We won’t get them the Monday night of the election as we usually do,” said Bonnie Hilford, city clerk for the City of Lethbridge.
In fact, Hilford says the official result may not come until Friday morning after the election, just hours before the city is mandated to have the count in.
This is because, according to the city, it takes them 41.6 seconds to count a single city council ballot and they are expecting a turnout of around 32,000 voters. Because of this, the city is planning to speed things up by separating ballots and ballot boxes for each voting category.
Currently, the city uses one ballot to elect a mayor, all city councilors, school board members and also any extra questions. However, the future will see each one on its own ballot to be deposited into its own ballot box.
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“Last election… we only had maybe 50 ballot boxes in total. This time we expect over 250,” said David Sarsfield, deputy city clerk in Lethbridge.
The city says every ballot and ballot box will be colour-coated and labelled to limit confusion. Although, this isn’t the only concern for election 2025. The Lethbridge municipal election is slated for Oct. 20. The next federal election must happen on or before that same day.
“Unless they have a vote of non-confidence, you could potentially be voting for both municipal, as well as federal, the same day. We’re aware of that, we’ve talked to the federal people and try to mitigate it and make it as easy as possible for the individual, but we sense there will be confusion,” said Sarsfield.
In another effort to maximize resources and limit confusion, the city plans to reduce the number of polling stations for the municipal election by creating ‘super stations.’
“Another change for the 2025 election is we will have, probably, we’re thinking three super stations for voting instead of the 14 smaller stations. We just find that we’d have some cost savings with that,” said Hilford.
The city says there are assistance plans in place for those who are unable to get out to vote .
All the extra counting and equipment also means higher costs, with the city estimating an additional $323,360 be spent next election.
“It falls on the city. We haven’t heard that the province will, at this time, provide any funding for that,” said Hilford.
The city says there is reserve funding that may be used, so taxpayers will not have to pay more for the 2025 expenses.
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