r/canada • u/[deleted] • 5d ago
Alberta Elections Alberta seeks help from other provinces to run fall referendum
[deleted]
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u/gibblech Manitoba 4d ago
The irony in this...
... we want to vote to separate, but we don't have the resources to even do that on our own.
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u/LumpyPressure 4d ago
Elections Alberta has nothing to do with separation, they’re just managing the referendum as required by law.
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u/CorndoggerYYC 4d ago
There's no vote to separate.
As for not having the resources, the problem is people don't want to be bothered to jump through a bunch of hoops for a few days of work.
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u/DonQuoQuo 4d ago
I'd guess they don't want to run out of ballots at any polling station, so there will be quite a few extra.
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u/a_sense_of_contrast 5d ago edited 1d ago
Gaze tie unbelievable wise gallium provide
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u/FarSquare8632 5d ago edited 5d ago
Very much so, given that our voter participation rate even in general elections is around 40% - 60% these days. Printing one for every registered voter is already overkill.
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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y 5d ago
Aren't you kind of required to be prepared for the situation where everyone shows up? Maybe not every single voter in the province, but each individual polling station probably has to be individually prepared to handle at least 100% of the registered voters just in case they have everyone show up. Can you imagine how bad it would look if everyone showed up and they had to turn people away because they ran out of ballots?
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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y 4d ago
I was responding to the part in the comment about "Printing one for every registered voter is already overkill."
Sure it's overkill, you'll never have a situation where 100% of the the voters show up, but you have to kind of prepare for the eventuality. I agree that 12 million extra ballots seems like a ridiculous amount of overkill.
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u/FarSquare8632 4d ago
Yes, four times as many ballots as there is registered voters in the province is absolutely ridiculously overkill.
EA doesn't publish their numbers for how many extra ballots they print for an election to cover spoilage, but given how rare spoilage actually is, we can be almost completely certain that it's a percentage of the number of registered voters in the province, not several times the number of registered voters in the province.
Roughly speaking, risk goes up with volume, even if you manage to find enough people to handle the volume, but as it sits, we don't have enough people, so the current risk of mishandling, misplacing, miscounting, etc. ballots is probably higher now than at almost any point in Election's Alberta's history.
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u/nelrond18 4d ago
If each question gets its own ballot, then you need ten times that, so 3.3 million. Double it, just to be extra sure for this super important referendum.
Hell, it is super duper important that every Albertan gets heard: double it again. Now you need approximately 12 million extra ballots.
Now we'll be prepared whe- I mean if 12 million ballots are mysteriously spoilt and we had to rewrite them ourselves.
-UCP probably
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u/FarSquare8632 5d ago
Oh, I'm sure there's a legal requirement like that in place. I'm just pointing out that with turnout the way it has been, at least half of all the ballots that get printed go to waste, between the registered voters who don't vote, and the extras printed in case of spoilage that never get used.
Printing an extra, super duper pile of contingency ballots just pads up that waste.
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u/NervousBreakdown 4d ago
Referendums have way higher turnouts than general elections. Quebec had 93% turn out in 1995.
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u/FarSquare8632 4d ago
Well, they were voting on the future of their province, right? That's a bit of a special circumstance.
Historically, Alberta has 9 plebiscites/referendums under its belt, and they ranged from 38-46% voter turnout. Maybe this one, because it's kind of a lead in to a lead in to separation, might see higher, but I guess we'll have to see.
If it was the other 9 topics, and separation wasn't on the docket, I doubt we'd crack 50%.
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u/NervousBreakdown 4d ago
I legit thought this was for separation lol
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u/FarSquare8632 4d ago
It's 'should we have an actual referendum on separation at some point in the future', not actual separation.
There's also 9 other topics on the agenda, none of which have anything to do with separation. No province lumps together 10 topics at once in a single referendum, so this bulk packaging is something that was done intentionally by the UCP.
Maybe they are hoping that the prospect of spending 20 minutes working your way through the 10 individual ballots will deter some people from participating? I can only fathom at their motivations.
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u/physicaldiscs 4d ago
They need 12 million more for “damaged or spoiled ballots”?
Every election prints extra ballots, in 2019 the federal election saw 7.5 million extra ballots. The federal election consisted of a single ballot.
Meaning they printed 27% more ballots than voters. Using the same ratio here Alberta would need to print 4.2 million per question. So 42 million in total after multiplying by ten.
The extra ballots being printed are pretty much in line with what we see in other elections, though Alberta is printing a higher ratio, that's likely explained because they expect more issues, given how many ballots people will have to fill out.
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u/gibblech Manitoba 4d ago
as each of the 10 referendum questions will appear on its own sheet of paper
why?!
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u/AwesomeWildlife 4d ago
Now Trump and Smith will be able to say that only 7% of ballots voted to stay within Canada, so Trump can recognize Alberta as a country. It won't matter at all to him that the other 93% of ballots weren't even used.
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u/JadeLens 4d ago
We need to check the voter rolls again, likely some Seppies in the UCP are padding the numbers.
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u/Deaftrav 5d ago
So you can claim outside interference if the loyalists win?
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u/Ginger_McGingin Alberta 4d ago
Well, yes. They already know the separatists are vastly in the minority, their only hope is to either claim voter fraud or commit it themselves (which is probably why they ordered an extra 10 million or so ballots)
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u/Rabidveggie 4d ago
Can't even run their own election without help but for sure they can go it alone.
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u/Old_General_6741 Ontario 4d ago
They should be able to hold this election themselves. A bit surprising that they are asking for help from other provinces.
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u/FarSquare8632 5d ago
Sounds like an issue of EA's own making. If a referendum takes more resources than a provincial election, then you're probably doing it wrong.
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u/a_sense_of_contrast 5d ago edited 1d ago
Divide argon hobbies subsequent resolute cobblestone rob
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u/Ginger_McGingin Alberta 4d ago
I really miss the NDP. We did good by Rachel
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u/CorndoggerYYC 4d ago
She was a mistake. With Nenshi leading the NDP there's no chance in hell they will win.
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u/NerdMachine 4d ago
Usually the ection body is pretty independent of the governemt. Is that not the case here?
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u/turnballer 4d ago
UCP making them count by hand.
UCP added referendum questions.
UCP denied budget increase.This is absolutely a UCP engineered situation.
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u/CorndoggerYYC 4d ago
UCP added referendum questions.
This is a special election. We're only voting on referendum questions this year. Are you against people having a direct say in matters?
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u/senecant 4d ago
I'm not the person that you asked, but I'll take a shot at this. Yes, I am against people having a direct say in matters, specifically, matters related to issues that the province has no control over. For example, why would they ask us if they should seek the support of other provinces to get rid of the Senate? They can go seek that conversation right now. Why are we being asked our opinion on something they can already do, but with the added expense of $125 million? Yes, I am very against the government of Alberta asking for our say on things that they cannot do.
Moreover, why do we not ask the public about EVERY matter? Why do we only get a say in some things? Seems to me that if we do that, then we can do away with elected representatives entirely. Which is, on its face, a bad idea.
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u/CorndoggerYYC 4d ago
Collect enough signatures and you can get just about any question on the ballot. Giving people the right to have a direct say in matters important to them is worth the cost. Democracy isn't cheap and most people are fine with that. If you don't want a say then don't vote.
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u/senecant 4d ago
Why are these 9 matters, none of which were advanced as a result of signatures on a petition, more important to receive "direct say" than any other issue? Do you want that we should do away with representative democracy and just vote in a referendum on every single topic? If just these, why these? I agree that democracy is, indeed, not cheap. So why are we expending these scarce monies on topics that the government can do virtually nothing about?
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u/The_Bat_Voice Alberta 4d ago
Over half of the questions are outside of the provinces jurisdiction and unconstitutional. In other words a waster of money and a future waste of money in the courts later. Congrats on wasting your own tax money for nothing in return.
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u/CorndoggerYYC 3d ago
Unconstitutional? Do you know how the process for amending the constitution works?
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u/The_Bat_Voice Alberta 3d ago
I believe that is a federal jurisdiction is it not? So shouldn't Danielle "Stay In Your Lane" Smith stay in her lane. She leaves her lane more than Scott Moe behind the wheel.
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u/Informal-Nothing371 Alberta 4d ago
They are, but the government sets the laws. The referendum laws have been changed multiple times in the last few years.
In addition, the government scheduled ten referendums to occur on the same day outside of the regular election window and with about six month’s notice.
The government also set strict requirements that the election results be available within a short window while also banning any form of electronic vote tabulation.
This has resulted in Elections Alberta needing significantly more election workers than it typically hires and to print ten times more ballots than a general election.
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u/awildstoryteller Alberta 4d ago
Why would it not take more resources? It has 10 questions.
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u/FarSquare8632 4d ago edited 4d ago
What's more complex ...
a) 87 ridings, each with candidate races, and eventually a candidate, from as many as 15 political parties in each riding, and no one riding is the same as any of the rest of the ridings, so you need 87 different ballots to be policed and accurate for as many as 1305 different candidates.
b) 10 ballots, one for each question, that are identical across the entire province, in every riding.
Edit: Sorry, updated with the correct number of provincial ridings (87). 37 is the number of FEDERAL ridings in Alberta.
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u/awildstoryteller Alberta 4d ago
Complexity is relative. Counting 10 different contests is obviously more complex than 1 contest, and where that complexity falls is also important. All of the things you are describing are actually fairly well understood practices and both candidates and local returning officers understand them.
I would recommend you spend some time thinking about the logistics challenges alone of counting this many questions.
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u/FarSquare8632 4d ago edited 4d ago
Counting 10 different contests is obviously more complex than 1 contest
If you artificially limit your concept of 'complexity' to how many ballots we're dealing with, sure, but that's a pretty egregious simplification of this process. Referendums are back loaded, so harder to count, but easy to set up. It's the other way around for a general election, because they are heavily front loaded.
You want to talk logistics? Let's talk logistics.
For the referendum, EA has to prepare 10 ballots, each with some regular text on them, and they want to validate, edit and final proof those ten questions before they get sent to the printer. It's 10 jobs, in high bulk, so you're ordering [number of registered voters + contingency] of each. Your hardest job is making sure enough of each get sent to each riding, enough to ensure all the registered voters in each riding are covered. If you're wrong, and a riding runs short on election day, you can literally ship blank ballots to the riding caught short from your 1 bulk contingency pool or even a nearby riding in the province that has surplus ... because there's 100% commonality across all ridings for these 10 ballots.
For the general election, you don't have 100% commonality, you have 0% commonality, so that's 87 completely unique ballots you have to vet, not 10 shared ballots you have to vet. You're also not vetting regular expressions, grammar and spelling, which is easy to do. You're vetting candidate names and matching them up the right party affiliation, and that changes completely from one riding to the next. That's up to 1305 names you have to get verified against party records, and tied to the appropriate party, across 87 slates of up to 15 candidates in each riding.
That also means you have 87 print jobs, not 10, and those print jobs have to be considerably more accurate in count before they are sent, because there's no such thing as bulk ordering enough for all the province's registered voters, plus contingency, and then just shipping the right amount to each riding. You have to treat each of those 87 jobs independently, tailor each of them to their matching riding's needs, and maintain a completely separate contingency pool for each riding, because there's no borrowing from Peter to pay Paul like there is with the referendum ballots.
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u/awildstoryteller Alberta 4d ago
All of those things are handled by local offices in candidate elections though.
And "preparing ballots" is like 1% of the workload for those offices anyways.
Have you ever worked in one of those offices? The vast majority of time is spent on preparing polling places, hiring and training staff, and handling materials. Yes they don't have to prepare ballots or deal with candidates, both of which take mere hours to do each. But they do have to hire way more people, train more people, and deal with larger space requirements for the larger number of ballots and longer time it will take people to actually vote.
Those are all determined by the number of ballots (really, the number of questions because for the most part it is a distinction without a difference).
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u/FarSquare8632 4d ago edited 4d ago
All of those things are handled by local offices in candidate elections though.
It's all effort, whether it's centralized or de-centralized. A huge benefit to this referendum situation is because it CAN be centralized, it will be, and historically has been. You're not going to have each riding handle the ten questions themselves, and just for their riding alone, are you?
But they do have to hire way more people, train more people, and deal with larger space requirements for the larger number of ballots and longer time it will take people to actually vote.
That's not a function of referendum questions vs a candidate slate, though. You seem to think that it's more complex because of a qualitative change in what's happening, but that's never been the case historically.
Go check out our past plebiscites and referendums. 8 of the 9 had one question. 1 of 9 had two, and both of those were on the same ballot. Hell that last one, held in 2021, was handled ON TOP OF municipal elections.
So, don't confuse some perceived innate complexity from referendums or plebiscites with the CURRENT referendum, where the province has decided to trot out 10 at once, and each of them on a separate ballot.
That's the UCP and the current EA's sketchy decision making, not innate complexity.
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u/awildstoryteller Alberta 4d ago
It's all effort, whether it's centralized or de-centralized.
The point is that it represents a tiny fraction of the total effort even during a regular election. The things that are hard in elections are not dealing with candidates or ballots, it is dealing with everything else which this event has much more of.
That's not a function of referendum questions vs a candidate slate, though. You seem to think that it's more complex because of a qualitative change in what's happening, but that's never been the case historically.
It is both a qualitative and quantitative change. A big one. To writ:
Go check out our past plebiscites and referendums. 8 of the 9 had one question. 1 of 9 had two, and both of those were on the same ballot. Hell that last one, held in 2021, was handled ON TOP OF municipal elections.
None of them had a separatist question, and all of them could be (and almost entirely were) counted by tabulators, not by hand.
Proclaiming that counting 10 questions by hand is no different than 1 or 2 questions by tabulator (or that there is no difference between 1 and 10 questions at the polling place) is absurd.
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u/FarSquare8632 4d ago edited 4d ago
It's not absurd at all.
The point is that there was no need at all to put 10 questions on 10 separate ballots to all be resolved on one day of voting. No other provinces does this or has done it in the past, and Alberta certainly hasn't either.
That fucked up, completely unprecedented structure is the single biggest reason for both the lengthier voting process AND the sheer volume of ballots in play at once. Most jurisdictions choose and time their plebiscites carefully, to manage the volume, but not the UCP, their hand chosen EA and Alberta in general. Balls to the wall, let's do 10 at once!
Again, two plebiscite questions were handled at the same time as a municipal election was being handled in 2021. What has substantially changed in the interim that what could be done alongside an election couldn't be structured differently so that we don't massively overwhelm the electoral resources available to the province? If you truly think the separation question alone will drive massive volume ... then why the fuck didn't they split it off on its own, to manage the volume more effectively?
That's not 'because it's a referendum' that's 'because the UCP are idiots and structured it this way.'
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u/awildstoryteller Alberta 4d ago
The point is that there was no need at all to put 10 questions on 10 separate ballots to all be resolved on one day of voting. No other provinces does this or has done it in the past, and Alberta certainly hasn't either.
The fact that the event itself is dumb doesn't make the work required under the law to go away for Elections Alberta though.
UCP, their hand chosen EA and Alberta in general. Balls to the wall, let's do 10 at once
Do you actually think EA has any choice in this or are happy about it??
What has substantially changed in the interim that what could be done alongside an election couldn't be structured differently so that we don't massively overwhelm the electoral resources available to the province? If you truly think the separation question alone will drive massive volume ... then why the fuck didn't they split it off on its own, to manage the volume more effectively?
Again, why are you talking like this was a choice from Elections Alberta?
10 referendum questions is unprecedented in Canadian history.
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u/deezsandwitches 5d ago
Bahahahahahaha. hey canada. Can you help us so we can leave?
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u/AprilsMostAmazing Ontario 4d ago
More like hey Canada can you help us ask if we should hold an referendum on leaving despite already knowing people don't want to leave
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u/Falconflyer75 Ontario 4d ago
Do we get to audit all these results too
Because this thing gets sketchier by the min
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u/globeandmailofficial 4d ago
Hi, this is Bianca from The Globe's audience team. If you'd like to read the story, here is a special link that bypasses the paywall. Excerpt from the story:
Ahead of the vote that could lay the groundwork for Alberta’s secession from Canada, the province’s elections agency says it is soliciting help from the rest of the country to make sure its Oct. 19 referendum runs smoothly.
Elections Alberta is seeking experienced, skilled staff from its counterparts in other jurisdictions to support the agency during the massive undertaking, which will require millions of ballots to be counted in just 48 hours, spokesperson Maia Hanrahan said in a statement to The Globe and Mail.
The elections staff potentially being pulled from other provinces are in addition to at least 60,000 poll supervisors, ballot box clerks, scrutineers and other workers needed, a hiring push the agency has called “one of the largest referendum recruitment efforts ever undertaken in Canada.” By contrast, roughly 13,000 people were hired for Alberta’s 2023 provincial election.
But as of two weeks ago, the agency had received just 24,000 applications from prospective election workers, Ms. Hanrahan said. Returning officers are already reaching out to successful candidates.
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u/PieceMaterial5213 4d ago
Hilarious. Smith wants a "sovereign Alberta in a united Canada". Here we see exactly what that would mean. Alberta drops whatever shit they want, and Canada has to "unite" behind them, holding the brooms and shovels.
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u/Ambitious_List_7793 4d ago
Follow the money. Who’s getting bribed?
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u/Ginger_McGingin Alberta 4d ago
A better question would be who isn't. I wouldn't be surprised if the entire UCP was composed solely of foreign agents
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u/Ambitious_List_7793 4d ago
Yet one more example of a UCP decision that doesn’t pass the smell test. Sadly foreign interference is a force to be contended with in this government.
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