Albertans from all corners of the province will be heading to the polls today to vote in municipal elections.
The vast majority of Alberta’s rural and urban local governments are holding council elections, including 19 municipalities with city status, 105 towns, 78 villages and 63 municipal districts and counties. Sixty-one school board elections will also take place today.
In Edmonton, where Mayor Amarjeet Sohi is not seeking re-election, voters will be electing a new mayor out of the 13 candidates running for the position.
There are also a total of 81 candidates running for 12 city council seats in each of Edmonton’s municipal wards. Voters can find which ward they live in and where they can vote through the City of Edmonton website.
Some voters have been reporting lengthy wait times to be able to cast their ballots in the city today. Edmonton Elections told CBC News in an email that because the process for voting is different this year, it can impact the time it takes to vote.
“We ask Edmontonians to plan ahead and please have patience.”
Political parties
New to this election is the introduction of municipal political parties in the province’s two largest cities.
This change was ushered in after the provincial government passed legislation last year allowing mayoral and council candidates in Edmonton and Calgary to run as a part of a local political party.
Though most of the mayoral and council candidates in Edmonton have chosen to stay independent, two political parties have emerged in the city.
One of the parties is the Better Edmonton Party, led by two-term councillor Tim Cartmell, who is the only mayoral candidate affiliated with a political party. The party is running candidates for council in every one of the city’s 12 wards.
The Principled Accountable Coalition of Edmonton party — or PACE — is also fielding councillor candidates in nine wards.
The two parties have platforms addressing similar concerns. They include promises to review city spending, change Edmonton’s blanket zoning policy and address transit safety.
Counting votes
Previously, electronic voting tabulators were used to count votes in Alberta’s municipal elections, but that will not be the case this year. Due to changes made by the provincial government last year, all ballots will be counted by hand.
A representative from the Edmonton Elections returning office told CBC on Friday that there will be individual ballots for the mayoral, councillor, and school trustee races.
Mayoral ballots will be counted first, followed by councillor ballots and then school trustee ballots, said the representative. The results from the mayoral race will be posted online first.
Aileen Giesbrecht, returning officer for Edmonton Elections, told reporters in September that she anticipates the counting will not be completed until tomorrow.
Edmonton Elections told CBC in September it will begin counting ballots shortly after voting stations close at 8 p.m., and it will release unofficial results as the count happens. It said some results will be available tonight.
The preliminary vote count will be completed by Tuesday, and the official results of the election are required by noon this Friday, according to the City of Edmonton’s website.
High bar set for voter turnout
The 2021 civic election in Edmonton saw a record number of 236,000 voters head to the polls, according to a report by Elections Edmonton.
This level of voter participation represented almost 38 per cent of the total number of eligible voters in the city, which is the highest percentage voter turnout since Edmonton’s 2004 municipal election, based on data from the city.
Almost 64,000 Edmontonians submitted their ballots early during a 10-day advance voting period in 2021, compared to more than 41,000 advance voters over a five day period this year.
