On election day (Monday, Oct. 20) after the polls close at 8 p.m., and all electors present at the voting station have cast their ballots, election workers will begin counting the votes cast at their assigned voting station.
On election night at 7:30 p.m., special ballots and institutional voting will be counted at the local Elections Office as determined by the Returning Officer.
Unofficial election results will be shared as soon as they are available, which is expected to be in the early morning hours on Tuesday, Oct. 21.
Official results will be posted on the City’s website on Friday, Oct. 24.
Election workers are hired specifically for counting ballots and the counting process is done in front of the Counting Centre Presiding Deputy Returning Officer (Counting Centre PDRO). Candidates can watch the ballot counting process or designate a scrutineer to attend the voting station to view the counting process.
Once election workers have finished counting all the ballots, the Counting Centre PDRO will notify the Returning Officer of the results for each race – Mayor, Councillor, School Trustee for Black Gold School Division and School Trustee for St. Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic School Division.
The ballots and other election documents are then sealed in the ballot box and delivered to the Returning Officer.
In previous elections, the City used vote tabulators to count each ballot and generate election results. Vote tabulators generated results in less than 30 minutes following the close of the voting stations.
With recent changes to the Local Alberta Elections Act, municipalities are only permitted to generate results using the traditional hand count method. This method is expected to take several hours as it is done by real people in real time.
Hand counting takes a significant amount of time, and it is expected that election workers will be counting ballots into the early morning hours of Oct. 21.
We thank candidates and members of the public for their patience during the ballot counting process. Hand counting is a labour intensive process, that requires validation to mitigate human error. The City is committed to counting the ballots as efficiently as possible.