Elections Alberta has until 10:59 p.m. local time to submit referendum results.
Initially, the agency thought the last poll had closed at 10:41 p.m. on Monday, but found it actually closed at 10:59 p.m. Elections Alberta has exactly 48 hours to report results.
“Things are going as expected. We knew it would take the full 48 hours to get this count done,” said spokesperson Michelle Gurney.
There are around 1,400 people on shift at the Edmonton Expo Centre counting votes by hand from more than 65,000 ballot boxes.
Official voter turnout numbers won’t be available until Oct. 29.
“People can cast all 10 ballots, but we can already see in some of the numbers you could speculate that not everybody cast all 10 ballots,” said Gurney. “On Oct. 19, the declarations don’t get recorded into the system … All of the focus is on the count and the documentation for the count to get the numbers up live on the website.
“Those declarations need to be processed and that’s why it takes a little bit more time to speak specifically to voter turnout.”
