Elections Alberta plans to recommend legislative changes following delays in counting ballots and reporting unofficial results from the province’s Oct. 19 referendum.
In an Oct. 24 statement, the agency outlined why it was unable to report all unofficial results for the referendum’s 10 questions within the legislated 48-hour deadline, citing “specific and exceptional challenges” at several voting locations.
The agency said it would propose amendments to provincial laws governing manual ballot counts and deadlines for reporting referendum results. The recommendations follow procedural errors at several voting locations, where workers did not separate ballots by voting area, forcing election officials to manually sort ballots to determine how votes should be reported….