By Shaun Penner

Advance Polls

Advance polling turnout could delay official election results

Apr 16, 2019 | 11:58 AM

Depending on how tight the races in local ridings are, and how many people voted in advance polls in each constituency, we may not know official results of the election for a few days.

Almost 225,000 people took advantage of the new “vote anywhere” option during advance polls, and Elections Alberta won’t start counting those ballots until tomorrow afternoon.

“That’s particularly for students. There’s lots of post-secondary students who aren’t in their home riding on voting day,” said Political Science Instructor at GPRC Dawn Moffatt-McMaster. “They’re going to have to sort those, get them distributed according to where the electoral district is, and then they will count them.”

That could make for an interesting night for both candidates and voters, who could be waiting anxiously for more than just a few hours, depending on how tight the race to the finish is.

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“I do know that last time, the NDP candidate, Todd Russell, was within 300 votes of the seat,” said Moffatt-McMaster. “If we are anywhere near that close this time, it will definitely affect us.”

With that said, there is no specific timeline as to how long it will take to find out.

“I would assume that process wouldn’t take too long. I mean, we are fairly efficient with our counting mechanisms in the regular process, but I don’t know for sure… certainly we haven’t seen these numbers previously.”

Nearly 700,000 Albertans took advantage of the advance polls, which equates to roughly 25% of all eligible voters in the province. That trend could suggest yet another spike in total voter turnout, as the 2015 election had a 57.02% turnout, up from both 2012 and 2008 (which sat at 54.37% and 40.59% respectively).

For up to date coverage on the election, stay tuned to EverythingGP throughout the night. We have an interactive results map that will be going live at 8 p.m. which will have local and provincial wide results as they come in.

Also, follow us on Facebook and Twitter, as our reporters will be out meeting with local candidates. We will also have live coverage starting at 7 p.m. on both Q99 and Big Country 93.1.