Elections Alberta said Tuesday that more than 3,000 mail-in ballot packages for the Oct. 19 referendum have been returned with missing declaration forms, errors or identification problems, leaving those ballots invalid unless voters fix them.
The agency said the affected voters still have time to submit the correct information by email, according to Global News. Voters who mailed in a package are being urged to check whether theirs is among those flagged.
Global News reported that more than 652,000 ballot packages had been sent to eligible voters. Elections Alberta had verified about one-third of the returned ballots so far, the outlet reported, which means the count of problem ballots could grow as officials work through the rest.
Albertans will vote Oct. 19 on whether to remain in Canada or begin a process toward a second, binding referendum on leaving Confederation. The agency has said it needs about 60,000 workers to run the vote, and Global News reported that about two-thirds of them have been hired.
The ballot problems are the latest in a series of administrative issues with the mail-in process. In early September, Elections Alberta apologized after some special ballot packages went out with outdated declaration wording from a previous version of the Election Act. The wording required signers to declare they were unable to vote at an advance or election-day polling place, and the form referred to penalties for false declarations.
Dallas Stoesz, the deputy chief electoral officer, said at the time that voters could cross out the outdated language and complete the rest of the form, and that all returned packages would be accepted regardless of formatting. Elections Alberta also reported at that point that a small number of voters had received packages missing ballot pages or entire ballots, and said those voters should contact the agency for replacements.
The agency also moved the deadline to request a special ballot up from Oct. 9 to Sept. 25 because of high demand. Requests had passed 290,000 within days of the first packages going out on Sept. 1, nearly five times the number in the 2023 provincial election, and kept climbing.
The scale of mail-in voting is what makes the invalid-ballot count matter. Each rejected package is one voter whose choice on a question about the province’s place in Canada goes uncounted unless they act. Young voters and people voting by mail for the first time may be less familiar with the declaration and ID requirements, though Elections Alberta has not released a breakdown of who is affected or what the most common errors are.
Elections Alberta has not said how it is contacting voters whose packages were flagged, or whether there is a final cut-off time for corrections before polls close on Oct. 19. Voters with questions can contact the agency directly or check elections.ab.ca for instructions.
The 3,000 figure comes from a single news report and has not been independently confirmed by a second outlet, so this story is developing. Earlier details on the September problems were confirmed by Global News, CP24 and CTV News.
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Via Global News. Background from CP24 and Global News.
