One of the things we’re fortunate enough to take for granted in Alberta is that our elections are fair. Oh, some Albertans will mimic conspiracy nutbars in the US, who think any election they lose must have been rigged, but generally speaking we have faith in the people who run our provincial elections.
Well, I suppose we trust Elections Alberta to make sure the ballots are counted correctly. But we might not have as much trust these days in how the agency does other things, such as communicate with the public.
In 2021 Elections Alberta got itself in such a mess on social media with an unprofessional attack on University of Alberta economist Andrew Leach that it issued an unprecedented tweet: “Elections Alberta is committed to rebuilding the trust of Albertans in the integrity of our Office.” Then, last April, ahead of the provincial election, it had to walk back another tweet. This one had mistakenly said Albertans “must be a registered voter” to cast a ballot. (Though it’s rarely necessary, voters can have a registered elector in their voting area vouch for them.)
Even before these mis-communications, however, the provincial government had twice undermined the integrity of our electoral system. In 2009 Ed Stelmach’s Progressive Conservative government effectively fired the Chief Electoral Officer, Lorne Gibson, after he wrote a scathing report pointing out serious shortcomings in the 2008 election, including the fact that 27 per cent of voters had been left off the list.
Gibson was later rehired, by the NDP government of Rachel Notley, to be Alberta’s first Election Commissioner. Among other things, he began investigating potential wrongdoing in the 2017 UCP leadership race in which Jason Kenney had defeated Brian Jean. In 2019, after Kenney became premier, he had Gibson fired again, this time via legislation that eliminated Gibson’s position as an independent officer of the legislature and transferred it to Elections Alberta—without transferring either Gibson or the money needed to pay for the position.
So as if Elections Alberta hasn’t done enough to bruise its own credibility, governments have unhelpfully been laying on a beating of their own. By getting rid of Gibson twice, Alberta’s conservative governments looked like they were afraid of being hit by someone with a reputation for being a straight-shooter. They managed to undermine not only their own credibility but that of Elections Alberta.
The Chief Electoral Officer position in Alberta has been more politicized than in any other province.
Perhaps nobody has been following the antics of Elections Alberta more closely than U of A political science professor Jared Wesley, and nobody has been more critical. “The Chief Electoral Officer position in Alberta has been more politicized than in any other province,” Wesley says. “Governments [here] are now treating not just the hiring but also the firing, demotion and under-resourcing of the Chief Electoral office as a political football.”
Wesley says Elections Alberta’s tweet in April, telling voters they had to preregister to cast a ballot, looked like the office was trying to make life easier for itself, not for voters.
Perhaps Elections Alberta is simply not used to dealing with hotly contested elections. This province has a record of one-party rule, where elections were largely foregone conclusions. “Elections Alberta historically was treated as more of a caretaker than an actual active elections agency like we see in other parts of Canada,” says Wesley. Because we haven’t paid as much attention to the people who count our votes, he adds, we have perhaps become complacent. And because our government has interfered with the roles of the Chief Electoral Officer and the Elections Commissioner, Wesley wonders: “Who in their right mind would sign up for a job like that, knowing it’s so highly politicized that they could be fired at any point for simply exercising their duties?”
Gibson lost his job as Chief Electoral Officer (the first time) after he’d complained that he couldn’t conduct a proper enumeration of voters because of Alberta’s bizarre, antiquated and unfair practice at the time, where the PC government controlled the system of nominating returning officers for each riding. Yes, you read that right. The government, through the cabinet, controlled who would be the chief ballot-counter in every constituency. It was the stuff of banana republics.
The government eventually adopted Gibson’s recommendations for reform—but not before voting against renewing his contract.
The job of Elections Alberta isn’t simply to run elections but to make voting as easy and secure as possible, to investigate complaints (e.g., about finance violations), to champion necessary reforms, and, at the very least, to understand its own legislation when communicating with the public. Sadly, Wesley says, “It’s gotten to the point now where I have to tell my students you need to fact-check the Elections Alberta website.”
Graham Thomson is a political analyst, member of the Legislature Press Gallery and former Edmonton Journal columnist.
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