Combined with ongoing UCP electoral jiggery-pokery, this is turning into a genuine crisis of democratic legitimacy

Public sentiment that something’s gravely wrong with the methodology used by Elections Alberta to abort musician and clean-water advocate Corb Lund’s Water Not Coal citizen initiative petition appears to be growing. 

On Wednesday, CBC Edmonton reported that an analysis by University of Toronto statistics professor Jeffrey Rosenthal used data from Elections Alberta to conclude the petition easily exceeded the number of validated signatures required to get Mr. Lund’s question on the ballot this fall.

That, of course, was an outcome Premier Danielle Smith’s government was determined to prevent so that a controversial coal mine on the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains can proceed – a fact that may or may not have something to do with Elections Alberta’s conclusion the petition did not have enough valid signatures. 

“It seems that their sampling method is seriously flawed and could vastly underestimate the percentage of valid signatories,” Dr. Rosenthal told the CBC’s Michelle Bellefontaine. (Emphasis added.) 

Dr. Rosenthal’s preferred methodology, CBC reported, would have resulted in a calculation of 181,891 valid signatures. He said a more conservative statistical test might have concluded there were 178,440. Either way, both estimates are above the 177,732 required to make the cut. Elections Alberta’s estimate after its analysis, meanwhile, was 172,088. 
And the sample upon which this conclusion was based: 384 signatures.

In an email, Elections Alberta spokesperson Maia-Lys Hanrahan responded by telling the CBC reporter that, “Respectfully, we’re not going to engage in a debate through the media with experts who have incomplete information.” 

Respectfully, I would suggest they should, since judging from his curriculum vitae, Dr. Rosenthal isn’t just some schmuck with an opinion and his clear argument that Elections Alberta’s small sample size and lack of follow-up “could very much skew the result” does tend to raise serious doubts about the agency’s neutrality in the eyes of many voters.

It lends credence to Mr. Lund’s observation to the CBC that “I think we got screwed on this thing pretty hard, actually.” 

Immediately after Elections Alberta announced it had rejected the petition, as legal proponent Mr. Lund published a press release on July 6 that stated: “After being briefed by my lawyer/scrutineer that was in the room during the count, I have some real issues with the way this was handled.”

“Elections Alberta confirmed,” the release continued, “that 207,435 signatures were submitted. After removing errors and 551 duplicates, Elections Alberta validated 196,088 signatures, well above the required threshold of 177,732. However, during the verification process, which involved attempts to contact petition signatories by phone and email, the total was reduced by 24,000, leaving the petition short of the threshold with a final total of 172,088 signatures.”

Twenty-four thousand? Whether or not this is fair to Elections Alberta, a hell of a lot of Albertans view this number with distrust and dismay. 

Postmedia’s long-time political columnist Don Braid concluded, “the system proved to be so deeply flawed that many people believe it’s crooked.”

And if undermanned and underfinanced Elections Alberta can’t handle this relatively easy task, he wondered, “how will it do when counting votes cast on 10 questions in polling stations across the province?” It’s possible, he suggested, “that Elections Alberta will collapse under the weight of this job.” 

Obviously, this has become a real crisis in light of the facts that Premier Smith’s United Conservative party has already shaken voter confidence with her government’s changes to citizen initiative legislation to ensure a separation referendum is on the ballot on Oct. 19 and then more to prevent other petitions, like Mr. Lund’s, from succeeding. 

The UCP’s rejection of the work of the Electoral Boundaries Commission and its replacement by a partisan legislative committee with an apparent mandate to impose Texas-style gerrymandering on Alberta before the next general election shouldn’t assuage the fears of anyone worried about the state of democracy in Alberta either. 

So, is this a case of something rotten in the state of Elections Alberta? That is not 100-per-cent clear. But whatever is going on, it’s extremely bad news when the opaque operations of the province’s election agency, charged with the job of ensuring the integrity of provincial election results, adds to the distrust of democratic institutions in Alberta that the UCP is fomenting. 

Mr. Lund has suggested he is considering seeking a judicial review of Elections Alberta’s decision. He will find there are many obstacles on that road, though, not least among them the cost of legal action. 

Meanwhile, it would also appear there are malign actors at work trying to sow doubt and confusion about the electoral system in Alberta, presumably in preparation for the strong possibility the Smith Government’s separation referendum will fail in October. 

In a news release on Thursday, Elections Alberta warned that it had discovered a fake website representing itself as the agency “designed to mislead by mimicking our legitimate website’s URL.”

As anyone who has been paying attention for the past decade should understand, malicious actions by foreign state and corporate bad actors are to be expected in response to the UCP Government willfully proceeding with its divisive and dangerous separation referendum. Elections Alberta hasn’t helped by sticking with an obsolete dot-ab-dot-ca domain name for its website. 

“I believe this disinformation activity is intended to ‘spoof’ Elections Alberta and is an attempt to reduce public confidence in my office and electoral events in Alberta,” Chief Electoral Officer Gordon McClure was quoted as saying in the news release. 

“My office does not have the legislative authority or jurisdiction to act or investigate this site,” he complained in the release. “For these reasons, I have contacted the appropriate enforcement and cyber security agencies and made them aware of the existence of this website.”

“I am also taking steps to attempt to have this website taken down,” Mr. McClure added. In that, at least, he seems to have succeeded, as the fake address as duplicated in the news release now redirects to Elections Alberta’s real site. 

But, c’mon. there is no way on God’s Green Earth that any of the UCP’s referenda should be on a ballot this year in light of this ongoing crisis of democratic legitimacy.