Elections Alberta failed to meet its 48-hour deadline to deliver the referendum results.
As the last poll closed at 10:59 p.m. on Monday, it had a mandate to finish the unofficial hand count of ballots by 10:59 p.m. Wednesday.
As of 2 p.m. Thursday, 19.6 million ballots had been counted, with 98 per cent of voting locations reporting.
Ballots were being counted around the clock.
“All of the ballots will still be counted,” Elections Alberta spokesperson Michelle Gurney confirmed in an interview Thursday afternoon. “We’ll continue to count until we’re completed. Every ballot matters.”
The agency did not have an estimate for when the initial count would be finished, and noted the count was beginning to slow down as it entered day three due to attrition.
Provincial regulations allot twelve hours for counting for every two questions on a referendum, or: 12 hours for a referendum with one or two questions; 24 hours for three or four questions; 36 hours for five or six questions; and 48 hours for seven or more questions. It does not designate a deadline for a higher number of questions than seven, nor does it outline a consequence for Elections Alberta missing a deadline.
The agency called hand counting 19 million ballots – as many as were cast in the last federal election – within 48 hours impossible.
“(For the) federal election, they have around 200,000 team members who support that event. We were around 47,000,” Gurney said, adding she put in a shift counting ballots Wednesday night.
“It is a very time-consuming process: You’ve got to unfold the ballots, sort the ballots, re-check they’ve gone in the right categories. Then you start the count, and then it’s verifying…. And then all of that data has to be checked by the count supervisor and then recorded by the returning office.”
Gurney said tabulators would have undoubtedly sped up the process. For Alberta’s last general election, Elections Alberta hired 13,000 workers. It originally sought to hire 60,000 workers for the referendum.
Each voter received 10 ballots with questions about immigration, constitutional reform, and Alberta separating from Canada. Counters were prioritizing the results of the separation question; those who voted to remain a part of Canada have consistently outnumbered the separatist camp three to one since results started coming in.
Official results, including voter turnout, are scheduled to be delivered on Oct. 29.
More of the other 9 flip
The “no” camp has begun to pull ahead on the questions gauging Albertans’ interest in various constitutional reforms.
Early Thursday morning, “no” votes outnumbered “yes” votes on questions six through nine, which asked voters if they supported the Alberta government working to change the Canadian Constitution to give provincial governments the authority to select their own justices, abolish the senate, opt out of federal programs without losing funding, and legally prioritize provincial laws over federal laws in areas of shared jurisdiction.
Only two of the four questions had shown a possible “no” majority early Wednesday.
“I think what this speaks to is Albertans’ confidence in the administration of justice, in the courts, in that important institution, and a rejection of some of the rhetoric attacking federally appointed judges,” said Will van Engen, an Edmonton-based lawyer and organizer with the Alberta Lawyers for Judicial Independence group, which has spent the last few months defending the independence of judges in the face of referendum Question 6.
Should those majorities remain “no” in the final count, such an outcome would be “a bit of a rebuke” of the Alberta government’s direction and put Premier Danielle Smith in a tough position, University of Calgary law professor Shaun Fluker told CTV News Edmonton.
As an example, he pointed to Question 9 – which asked if Albertans supported provincial law trumping federal law in areas where both levels of government are responsible – and called it reminiscent of the Smith’s 2022 sovereignty act, which the Alberta government has used to push back on federal legislation.
“To the extent that the outcome of that question is binding, it raises the question as to whether the province has the consent of Albertans to actually use that act against the federal government,” Fluker said.
“It’s not the outcome that the premier would have wanted because even in the immigration questions, the vote is very split. It’s not a resounding endorsement of much of the Smith government’s policies over the last number of years.”
Overall, he said the early results of the constitution questions suggest Albertans prefer their government to care more about matters that affect them on a daily basis.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Smith acknowledged that the proposed constitutional reforms appeared less important to voters.
“Albertans would just rather that we spend our time focusing on things where we can make some meaningful change,” Smith said.
“And I think that’s a message we’ll take away. We have to focus on the things that Albertans want us focusing on.”
On Thursday, the “yes” votes were leading the other five questions, all of which had to do with immigration.
With files from The Canadian Press and CTV News Edmonton’s Chelan Skulski
