Alberta cities face higher election costs this fall after province bans electronic vote counters

As municipalities around Alberta prepare for local elections this fall, some cities are projecting higher costs and longer wait times in light of new rules set out by the province last year.

When the Alberta government passed Bill 20, it banned the use of electronic vote tabulators, a method some cities have used to count ballots in every municipal election for decades. The vote counting machines speed up the process, allowing municipalities to save money and offer results to the public more quickly, compared to counting votes manually.

But counting votes by hand is what every municipality will need to do this fall, and some cities are looking at costs double or triple what they spent in the 2021 municipal elections. The rise is partly due to increased staffing municipalities will need to count ballots in a process that could last much longer than the public is used to waiting to hear results.

Since introducing Bill 20, the province has maintained that manually counting votes will better maintain voters' trust in election integrity. But Alberta Municipalities president Tyler Gandam said he hasn't seen evidence to back up that assertion, and he's frustrated municipalities weren't consulted more about how to run their own elections.

"We're using automated tellers for grocery stores and retail, we're using these kinds of machines for testing in schools. I'm just not seeing the data that supports that there's going to be a higher level of confidence in an election result through hand-counting versus a voting machine," said Gandam.

He added that large population centres will especially feel the strain of manual counts. Voter turnout in Calgary and Edmonton in 2021 saw hundreds of thousands of votes cast, and with the population growth Alberta has seen in the years since then, Gandam said the strain of even more ballots to count could be placed on elections staff this fall.

Rising costs to operate elections

Within the last year, several municipalities around Alberta have released projections of how much more they expect to spend to operate local elections.

Last October, City of Edmonton officials projected nearly $5 million in extra costs will be needed to run this fall's election. Further south, a recent report commissioned by the City of Lethbridge expects its election to cost the city roughly twice as much as in 2021, largely due to hiring 300 to 400 additional workers.

Increased staff projections have led to increased costs expected in Red Deer as well, with an additional $940,000 planned. And in Medicine Hat, the city's budget of $400,000 for the election is up from an initial $270,000 projection, while it also plans to cut the number of polling stations it opens in half, from 20 to 10, as a way to contain costs.

In St. Albert, the city's elections budget has tripled to $930,700, compared to $261,200 in 2021.

The City of Calgary said will not publicize how much it expects to spend in this fall's election until it can confirm a final number, which it expects to do in September.

The municipal election is scheduled for Oct. 20.

Added cost a burden we pay for transparent democracies: provincial minister

Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams said he's "very happy" even despite increased costs, to improve election integrity

"That's the burden we pay here in the west for having transparent and open democracies," Williams said in an interview on Thursday.

"I think it's business as usual."

Williams argued only five or six municipalities have raised the vote counter ban as an issue to him since he became municipal affairs minister in May, adding that it's how federal election ballots are already counted.

Most Alberta municipalities aren't worried about having to count votes by hand, Williams said, and are instead "dealing with work they should be dealing with," such as water delivery, filling potholes, attracting investment and keeping taxes down.

"I wish luck to every single [municipal] candidate so that they can do the work that they need to, which is, to be honest, not worrying about if we should have vote tabulators," said Williams. 

"The province has decided for certainty in our elections and confidence in the way that we run our municipal elections, this is the best way to do it. It's how we decide to do it at the federal level, it's how we decide to do it at the provincial level, it's also good enough for our municipalities. That's the priority of this government, and the priority of municipalities should be making sure that those basic services are being rendered to all the ratepayers."

But Bonnie Hilford, Lethbridge's city clerk, points out her city has used electronic tabulators in every election for more than 30 years without hearing concerns about election integrity.

"We've been using tabulators in the city of Lethbridge since 1989, and we've never had a challenge or a contested election," said Hilford. 

"We're kind of wondering why we have to move to hand-counting, which will take a lot longer [and] cost a lot more."

Because voters in Lethbridge select more than one candidate for city council and school trustee roles, Hilford said the city expects the public won't receive full election results for two days after polling stations close.

The added wait time for results, coupled with increased staffing costs, has pushed Lethbridge city council to advocate for the province to reverse course. Hilford said she expects council to take that same position after this year's election, as a way to try and save taxpayers' money.

Advocacy expected to continue after election

Along with his role at Alberta Municipalities, Gandam is also the mayor of Wetaskiwin, a city of roughly 13,400 people.

Wetaskiwin previously counted votes manually as a cost-effective alternative to vote tabulators, but Gandam said they paid for it in the length of time it required. When the city struggled to recruit enough reliable elections staff in 2021, Gandam said they decided to begin using vote counters in its next election as a more efficient and reliable method. But now the province has blocked that move.

Last fall, Alberta Municipalities members voted to adopt a resolution calling for a reversal on the province's ban of vote-counting machines. Gandam said the organization plans to connect with its members after this year's elections, and bring any relevant concerns to the province to potentially make changes before the next election in 2029.

Williams said he's interested in seeing the vote tabulator ban continue, but that he's open to having that conversation with municipalities.

"If municipalities do bring it up as their biggest concern, not funding for wastewater, not making sure they can lower taxes … then I'll hear that conversation, if this is their priority coming out of the election," said Williams.