Elections Alberta seeking help from other provinces for referendum

Elections Alberta has announced it is soliciting help from electoral staff in other provinces to run the upcoming October referendum, inviting senior staff from election management bodies across the country to support its permanent team for what it calls a “critical election event.”

The implications of importing outside election staff was a topic of discussion between hosts Sheila Gunn Reid, Lise Merla and panellist Cory Morgan on this week’s Buffalo Roundtable livestream. 

Lise noted the irony, given the entire premise of the Alberta independence movement is that Alberta can do things for itself — “and then we have Elections Alberta saying, actually no, we need to call in experts.” 

She also flagged the track record of those expert jurisdictions being invited in, pointing out lost ballot boxes in British Columbia, and Quebec, where a election decided by one vote ended up in court.

“I sure hope we don’t get (those people)” Sheila said.

A more pressing concern for the Buffalo Roundtable, however, is electoral scrutineers. Scrutineers are members of the public authorized to observe ballot counting and serve as the most direct check available against electoral irregularities.

Cory Morgan said Elections Alberta has made “an unholy mess” of communicating how third-party advertisers can participate in the scrutineer process. 

After repeated attempts to get clarity, he received a response explaining that scrutineer spots go first to political parties — specifically the UCP and NDP — and that any remaining spots may be filled from TPA-submitted lists at the chief electoral officer’s discretion, with TPAs to be notified sometime between now and October 29.

“What this means practically,” Sheila said, “is that the only people overseeing the count will be federalists. The NDP and the UCP are both on the federalist side,” she added, wondering “how is that fair?”

Cory said he hoped many of the UCP-affiliated scrutineers would in fact be independence supporters, since Elections Alberta cannot determine which side a scrutineer sympathizes with, only which party they registered through. The process, he said, should be far more open.

“Whoever lost is going to claim the system was broken,” he said. “And they’re going to have a lot of basis to make that claim.”

Sheila also connected the scrutineer issue to Elections Alberta’s broader track record of discretion in this campaign — specifically its apparent inaction regarding Forever Canadian, the federalist third-party advertiser that appears to be running a full province-wide campaign while declaring zero contributions.

“We’ve seen what Elections Alberta’s discretion with the law has given us,” she said.

The Buffalo Roundtable airs Wednesdays at 11 a.m. MT / 1 p.m. ET.