A change to the way Elections Alberta processes and verifies votes on election night is the reason the results were slower to be reported Tuesday.
“There’s a lot going on on election night, particularly in the voting places and returning offices,” said Robyn Bell, a spokesperson for Elections Alberta.
“We’ve got the hand count taking place in all the voting places. In the returning offices, we have mobile voting stations, special ballots and all the tabulator results being recorded.”
As has been done in previous provincial elections, all the hand-counting for each electoral division took place in the voting places.
What was new, however, was that the tabulator ballots and the “vote-anywhere ballots” were counted in returning offices rather than at Elections Alberta headquarters.
There were 20 counting teams at Elections Alberta headquarters counting special ballots, but even some special ballots are received at returning offices.
“Returning officers aren’t just counting ballots for their individual electoral divisions; they could be counting for multiple electoral divisions,” Bell added.
“We have multiple verification processes at every step of the way to make sure those results are accurate. That process just takes time. We were prioritizing the accuracy of the count over the speed of it.”
Former UCP MLA Leela Aheer said that when she was elected in 2015, she knew she’d won her riding by 8:15 p.m. This year, two-and-a-half hours went by before there were enough results for Global News to start projecting most riding winners.
“It’s just the processes that we have in place this year,” Bell said. “It was a change. So regardless of how long a returning officer has worked with us, it was a new process for everyone this year.”
There are verification processes that are done before any advance ballot results can be reported. In addition, the counting of advance ballots doesn’t begin until polls close at 8 p.m. on election night.
“The results, when we see those come in, it really just depends on the volume of work at the returning offices and the verification processes that take place and when they can enter the results into the statement of vote, and that’s a manual process,” Bell explained.
As a safeguard measure, the tabulators are not connected to a network.
“So, unfortunately, we can’t just hit ‘upload’ and see the results on our website right away. What happens is the returning officers print off results tape, that’s reviewed manually, a verification process begins there, and then they’re uploaded into the statement of the vote and entered into the results website. It just takes time.
“We didn’t experience any technical issues with the tabulators, I can confirm that.”
Bell said that after every election, Elections Alberta reviews what went well and what didn’t go well, and submits recommendations to the legislative assembly to improve or change the next provincial election or by-election.
Election statistics:
Valid votes cast: 1,763,441
Advance votes: 755,840
Special ballot: 50,962
Registered voters: 2,840,927
Voter turnout (unofficial): 62.4 per cent
“With the unofficial count, our voter turnout was about 62 per cent, so slightly less than the last election,” Bell said, “but still a strong turnout.
“I believe our lowest turnout was 40 per cent and that was just in 2008, and our highest… was above 80 per cent.”
In 2019, voter turnout was 69.9 per cent.
Official results will be confirmed June 8.
Percentage of vote for NDP: 44 per cent
Percentage of vote for UCP: 53 per cent
Declined ballots: 745
Rejected ballots: 8,138
“We didn’t see anything outside the norm in with those numbers,” Bell said, when asked about the amount of declined and rejected ballots.
“A declined ballot is where someone still shows up to vote, they’re issued a ballot, then they return that ballot to the elections officer and say: ‘I decline my vote today.’
“We understand that to be an expression that there was no candidate they wish to endorse on election day.”
A rejected ballot could be a blank ballot or one that selected more than one candidate.
“But really, the largest factor in rejected ballots are special ballots that were requested but never returned back to us,” Bell explained. “Those special ballots that were never returned … result in about 85 per cent of rejected ballots.”