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.
Its incredible to me, that this is all so wrong, that I agree with Don Braid.
Oh, those Australians. Well, the one involved in this story, anyways. They do love pushing their mines on us, no matter the long-term consequences for the people of Alberta. Why should they care? Their homeland is oceans away and they’ll pack up and leave us holding the bag. Right, Maia-Lys Hanrahan?
As for our premier, when can we stop calling her an authoritarian libertarian and call her what she really is? Hint: it involves subverting democracy and placing personal power, control and enrichment above all else. Democracy is in the rear-view mirror in Alberta now and it’s smaller than it appears. If only it would take the premier with it.
Something is wrong with the url to this article. Only the title, no photo of Corb, comes up on FB.
Thanks for great analysis you do.
Roger: The Internet is weird. It does stuff like that, sometimes for no comprehensible reason. Or I may have introduced a stray keystroke into the version I posted on FB. Regardless, in the event of such problems, just go to either AlbertaPolitics.ca or AlbertaPolitics.com and the site should open properly. DJC
Meanwhile, Elections Alberta is also in the process of validating signatures for the Stay Free Alberta petition to force a binding vote on separation, now that a court order has ruled that verification can take place while an appeal on the validity of the whole exercise takes place. In other words, any resources Elections Alberta spends on the validation process will be completely wasted if the appeal is unsuccessful.
Danielle Smith has suggested the currently planned referendum question on separation is a compromise between the question demanded by the Forever Canadian initiative and the Stay Free Alberta side. By continuing to pursue their own petition, it appears the Stay Free people are trying to get their exact question on a ballot. As such, it seems fair that the exact question Forever Canadian petitioned for should be on October’s ballot.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/elections-alberta-separation-referendum-verification-9.7260401
“Reduce public confidence” in Elections Alberta? After they allowed the leak of personal information of 4 million Alberta voters? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
384!!! A ‘somewhat’ reasonable poll needs at least 1000 responses. Bogus science from Elections Alberta.
Thank you for writing this, David. I am one of the people who have lost ” voter confidence with her government’s changes to citizen initiative legislation”.
I spent several hours last summer biking around our neighbourhood off-leash park collecting signatures for the Forever Canadian initiative, in the hopes of nipping a separation question in the bud. It was, then, a real slap in the face when Danielle Smith then used my efforts to argue people wanted a referendum on the topic.
When I signed the Water Not Coal petition it was a blustery day in late February, and volunteers were standing in the cold outside the Old Strathcona Farmers’ Market. I can only imagine the betrayal they feel having their victory taken away from them.
Elections Alberta used to have power, and they were an apolitical entity. That has surely changed after the UCP got into power. Once (the now former) Elections Alberta head, Lorne Gibson, caught the VPN premier, and other shady players in the UCP camp doing nefarious things, $230,000 in fines were handed over to these people. The VPN premier didn’t like it, and in a cowardly move, while outside of the province, in the Lone Star State of Texas, he fired Lorne Gibson and his entire staff. Coincidentally, David Parker, who pulls the strings on the UCP, and is the leader of Take Back Alberta, has to pay over $100,000 in fines that were given to him by Elections Alberta for disobeying the rules. He laughed it off, while in Texas. The UCP and Danielle Smith weakened the strength of Elections Alberta even further, with Bill 54, and Elections Alberta opposed this, and it caused major problems, including a data breach on a level that has never been seen before in Canada. Of course the UCP and Danielle Smith has their agenda, which is to appease a billionaire from Australia, in her quest to have coal mines in the Rockies of Alberta, at the expense of the environment. Massive settlements that are over $15 billion to coal mining companies, because the UCP were flip flopping on contractual agreements, were never fully paid off. The UCP has their own agenda, and they don’t care what Albertans want. Garbage conduct like this is what you would expect from governments in other countries, but it is here in Alberta, with the UCP. Democracy is a joke to the UCP, as is accountability.
Anonymous: It’s important to remember that Mr. Gibson headed a different office, the Office of the Election Commissioner, established on July, 2018. The role of the office was to ensure compliance with, and enforcement of, regulated entities under the Election Act and Election Finances and Contributions Disclosure Act. Mr. Kenney, whom you reference, fired Mr. Gibson and rolled his office into Elections Alberta, which was then and now headed by the Chief Electoral Officer. Mr. Kenney, who was a petty man, probably intended this act of vandalism as part of his Summer of Repeal, removing or appearing to remove all NDP legislation, which was soon followed by the Summer of COVID. DJC
Where does Kenney’s Best Summer Evar fit into this chronology?
Lars: Good question. I would argue the Best Summer Ever was announced but never implemented. Leastways, it was soon rebranded The Summer of COVID. DJC
What is truly amazing here is how few dedicated people are required to tear Alberta away from the rest of Canada. You could also bet your last dollar that somewhere in a back room in Alberta someone is saying if they weren’t meant to be sheared they wouldn’t have been made sheep. Yessir, the UCP are still leading in the polls.
My wife and I have signed 3 petitions – Forever Canadian, Water Not Coal, and the school funding. The school funding did not garner enough signatures, so no verification process. But we never received a verification contact for the other two. Given Water Not Coal got half of Forever Canadian, I was somewhat expecting a call from Elections Alberta. So now I am wondering if their verification selection process id flawed too.
Elections Alberta claimed that any verification call from them would NOT come from anonymous numbers and that caller ID would be used. They also advised people to NOT provide information to anyone calling from an unidentified number who claimed to be Elections Alberta staff. They either lied or screwed up, because verification calls apparently did NOT come up with the Elections Alberta ID but rather came from unidentified callers. Who answers calls from anonymous numbers these days!? There’s no way to know if this was deliberate chicanery or just sheer incompetence. Regardless, Elections Alberta has completely lost the respect and trust of many Albertans, which will ultimately lead to voter disengagement and lower election turnout. It’s just another way that Smith’s UCP has egregiously, and possibly irredeemably, harmed the province and undermined democratic norms and institutions.
Those that received calls were from unknown numbers nott Elections Alberta brand. A breach of their own professed protocol. No one answers unknown caller certainly not to give out personal info. Especially since earlier data breach.
IM: I can vouch for this. I received one of their calls. There was no identification of the caller. I did answer, although I seriously contemplated not doing so because it looked like yet another trash hang-up call. DJC
Given the UCP’s obvious and continual manipulation to achieve whatever outcome it desires in any given situation, when the talk of a referendum began three questions came to mind immediately:
1. Who is counting the votes?
2. Who is auditing the count?
3. Who is auditing the auditor?
In light of everything that DJC has documented here, it’s clear that the entire referendum process is in shambles and the whole thing should be scrapped for its lack of transparency, questionable legitimacy and overwhelmingly undemocratic bias. I don’t expect that to happen though so the least Smith could for us is to tell us what the results are now and save the $130M or so that it will cost us for the performance of this charade. Which brings to mind a new question:
4. When do we start protesting in the streets?
Is the sewage flowing out of the UCP government endless? Remove all the McDonald’s in that province cuz we’re starting to smell the results all the way over here.
This whole UCP citizen’s intitiative/referendum/direct democracy scheme was never anything but a joke because a) our Westminster representative system was never designed to incorporate direct democracy, b) it was designed to give the ra-ra freedumb crowd some semblance of control, and c) it was only ever going to validate right wing initiatives while giving false hope to the progressives. People like Lund and Lukaszuk thought they could beat the UCP at their own game but found the system is just too powerful and rigged.
Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
It is both quite obvious and quite simple really. In Alberta corporate interests such as shareholder values and profits are the preferred priority and are intentionally chosen by government enablers and overshadow public interests such as social well being, citizens health, and environmental concerns. It is both automatic behavior and government doctrine.
So it becomes the case where regulations and policies are captured and manipulated by bureaucrats and legislators who write and manage them in order to serve the interests of those who are subject to them.
Therefore it should be quite obvious that there is a deliberate and focused continuity in policy choices and the means of achieving them no matter who the party leader is, because the corporate interests that are shareholder values and profits; which, are also government priorities remain consistent over time.
That is, past behavior models and predicts future behavior and policy choices by default, i.e., it is automatic, because, for example:
“Sean Holman, a professor of journalism at Mount Royal University who specializes in access to information, says the party “isn’t operating in accordance with the evidence.”
“They’re operating according to what they want the world to be, as opposed to what the world actually is,” Holman says.
He adds that, while most governments are secretive, Alberta governments tend to be moreso, and the UCP is more secretive still.
The government has commissioned reports that critics say serve to justify predetermined outcomes, instigated an inquiry into environmental groups decried as a political witch hunt, and inaugurated an energy war room shielded from public scrutiny but funded by public dollars.”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/mistruths-alberta-government-gaslighting-1.5957396
The voting public in Alberta appears to like and prefer things that way.
Pickles, one clarification to your final statement: The rural voting public in Alberta appears to like and prefer things that way. The cult-like rural obsession with corrupt conservative governments and their predecessor wacky Socred governments is the hallmark of Alberta provincial elections.
It does seem like something fishy is going on here with Elections Alberta and its verification process.
It is unfortunate that this process which should have been intended for exactly something like Lund’s initiative has now descended into this level of farce.
So we now have a mish mash of questions voters are being asked, none of which were as intended by the people getting signatures, some which had no signatures at all and others which had many signatures being prevented from being asked.
It seems to me what was initially put forth as an exercise in more direct democracy has now been turned into the opposite.
Danielle Smith could shoot democracy dead in broad daylight and not lose any referenda.
David, you are absolutely right. Elections Alberta’s credibility is seriously undermined. I simply do not believe that there were so many truly invalid signatures – and EA is confident in its methodology, it should publish that information and not try to bury the controversial results of their process with a Friday-afternoon announcement.
It was the 551 duplicates that caught my eye. Did anyone look into who was doing the duplicating? Me thinks there is a rotten smell of sabotage.
It is becoming clear that Danielle Smith just loves to copy Trump. I believe we have a problem of trust on elections Alberta and maybe we can start a boycott on the Oct 19 UCP beer fest. No one should vote. She is going to manipulate the results.
Carlos: I agree. The garbage that goes on in other countries, with their shady governments is happening here in Alberta. When Danielle Smith or her MLAs gets questioned, they go on the defensive. She is setting up a provincial police force, because it will be a police state. That’s what Danielle Smith wants is a full on power grab.
The denial of the water, not coal petition reeks of political interference. Obliviously, Smith prefers cash under the table, to doing what’s right for Alberta. One day Karama, is going to bite her in the ass.
Over the course of 9 months I worked all 3 progressive cip’s Forever-canadian.ca abfundspublicschools.ca and waternotcoal.ca, garnering almost 2,000 signatures working in heat waves, -22 and thunderstorms b4 we could get indoors.
The ucp thinks democracy is for the weak and naive but we are the stalwart defenders of a potentially just society.
Tom Flanagan, Smith’s mentor, at one time believed in democracy. The then libertarians found that free markets and democracy were messy. Too many demos in the cracy protesting, intervening, witnessing.
Libertarianism gave way to neostatism aka absolute control of every aspect of society from what you call yourself as a teen to your right to legitimate process by independent bodies like Elections Alberta.
The ucp will stop at nothing to achieve its’ ends: break laws make laws and undermine any attempt to call them to account.
Ironically, the resistance in Alberta has never been more broad based, dedicated and savvy. Smith and its’ bumbling eejit cronies don’t get it. Every move to squash us just expands our reach. We are the mercury let loose from democracy’s broken thermometer. We multiply at every attempt to push us down. We are winning because we are connected and we are strong. Smith and its’ pathetic posse won’t know what hit them.
They’ll whine about it and blame Trudeau or Carney when they are wiped out at the ballot box or self destruct due to their own incompetebce, hubris and corruption.
IM Citizen: Here’s to hoping the UCP get tossed out.
Gerrymandering will keep the UCP in power forevermore.
I understand that Elections Alberta is cash-strapped.
Would Elections Alberta agree to let the Water not Coal volunteers to volunteer to verify all the signatures they collected. Statistical methods ought not play a part. Danielle Smith is insisting upon paper ballots for the referenda when a computer ballot would be so much easier and cheaper for trust in the referenda results. Let her allow volunteers to verify all the signatures collected then.
I signed the petition and I got zero emails to verify me. If I did get any phone calls from a number I don’t recognize i don’t answer. However I can confirm no phone calls to me from Elections Alberta. No attempts to verify me. I think this result is fraud to reduce those of us who signed and rig the petition results so they seem like way less. Please seek legal action against their decision, misrepresentation and lies.