The campaign is over and today the voting takes place, as people living in municipalities across Alberta will cast their ballots to elect a new mayor, council and school board trustees.
Polls open Monday at 10 a.m. and will close at 8 p.m. If you are still in line at 8 p.m. you will still be able vote.
In order to cast a ballot, you must be at least 18 years old and a Canadian citizen with a valid piece of identification, such as government-issued photo ID or another document, such as a bank or credit card statement, personal cheque, utility bill or vehicle registration that has your name and current address on it.
More information on who is eligible to vote, what forms of identification are acceptable, where you can cast your ballot and who the candidates are, is available online from Elections Calgary or your local municipal elections office if you are voting in a community outside Calgary.
According to Elections Calgary there are more than 896,000 eligible Calgarians who are registered to vote.
Unofficially, about 10.7 per cent of them, or about 96,549 eligible voters, cast their ballot in the advance poll that was held from Oct. 6 to Oct. 11.
Recent changes to provincial legislation mean all ballots cast in this year’s municipal elections need to be counted by hand adding both time and cost to determining who the winners are.
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In Calgary and Edmonton, this is the first election held following some major changes to municipal election laws (Bill 20), put in place by the UCP government.
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Among them, candidates are now allowed to run under the banner of a municipal political party.
Mount Royal University political scientist, Duane Bratt, says while the province’s UCP government may have hoped political parties would increase public engagement in municipal elections, that doesn’t appear to have happened.
“If anything, what the parties have done is confused matters,” said Bratt.
“Just the names alone is quite confusing because you don’t have the conservative party, you don’t a progressive party, you don’t have a liberal party.
“They are all variations around Calgary and community and that makes it really, really hard to do and you’ve got some of the top candidates for the mayor’s job but also at the ward level running as independents, so they’re dismissing the parties.”
In Calgary, recent polls show the race for mayor is a tight one between five candidates, including incumbent Jyoti Gondek, former city councillor Jeromy Farkas, Communities First party candidate Sonya Sharp, Jeff Davison and the Calgary Party’s mayoral candidate Brian Thiessen.
According to a recent poll, many voters say they may not make up their mind until they go to cast their ballot.
The changes to provincial legislation also prohibit the use of electronic vote tabulators for this election.
Instead, all ballots must be counted by hand, which is expected to lead to some lengthy delays in the announcements of who the winners are.
In Calgary, advance vote mayoral ballots will be counted first, in case a recount is needed, with the outcome expected to be known late on election night.
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The results of the race for council are expected sometime on Tuesday and the outcome of the races for public and separate school board trustees are expected to take even longer.
The results of all the races must be submitted to the province by noon on Friday, Oct. 24.
The provincial legislation changes also mean this election is going to be a lot more expensive.
In Calgary, the cost was originally pegged at $1.3 million.
However, Elections Calgary has had to hire more people in order to count the ballots by hand, adding an additional $3.3 million to the cost and bringing the total budget for this year’s election to just shy of $12 million.
Global Calgary will have special coverage of the election starting at 5 p.m. and again at 6 p.m., hosted by anchors Dallas Flexhaug and Joel Senick.
We will also have an election special starting at 9:00 p.m. that will be available on the Global Calgary website, on Roku, Prime or the Global TV app.
Decision Calgary will include live updates from reporters in the field, along with expert analysis from a political panel hosted by anchor Blake Lough and results from surrounding communities with anchor Sarah Offin.
You can also join us for the all the latest updates on Global News at 11.
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