Noteworthy: Electoral rule changes were said to promise more accuracy; all they did was muddy and delay the process

By Bruce Penton on October 29, 2025.

If Danielle Smith’s provincial government wanted to devise a way to make it more difficult for citizens to vote – and perhaps throw up their hands and walk away without casting a ballot – the decision to ban electronic voting machines was perfect.

Banning electronic voting didn’t create the long, snail-like lineups, but the new system’s requirement that poll workers had to fill out voter attestation forms for everybody, including their name, their address and then get a signature, slowed the process to a crawl.

In past municipal elections, delays were minimal – maybe 15 to 20 minutes, tops.

At my voting location, the holdup creating the long lines was at the registration desk. Only two people were handling the registration, while three others, like Maytag repairmen, sat at a nearby table handing out ballots. I scanned the room and there were eight – eight!! – empty voting booths. And about 100 people waiting in line.

More workers handling the registration of voters would have helped, but that would have added to the already costly overruns. How much taxpayer money was spent on hand-counting the votes?

Waiting a couple of days for the hand-counting to produce the final results didn’t bother me, but man, the long lineups to get to a voting table with ballots in hand was excruciating. About 1,700 fewer voters cast ballots this year than in 2021. Has the city’s population declined? Or did the voting process lead to the drop?

In the ‘old’ days (like, 2021) election workers had an enumeration list and as long as you were able to provide a name and address at the registration table, you were given a ballot and a line would be struck through your name, indicating you had voted.

That long, drawn-out process Oct. 20 during the municipal election achieved nothing but frustration, wasting of time, thousands of dollars in extra expenses and many people simply not voting because of the onerous task of standing in line for up to 90 minutes to cast a ballot.

This is only my theory, but this whole hand-counting-of-votes business has its genesis with the American MAGA, who still can’t get over Donald Trump’s 2020 loss in the presidential election and conspiratorially blamed electronic counting mistakes for the defeat. Many on the MAGA team still think Dominion Voting Systems somehow conspired to steal the election from Trump. FOX News was forced to pay a $787-million settlement to Dominion for its on-air insistence that the company’s machines led to voting fraud that sideswiped Trump.

It wasn’t long before the blame-the-machines theory crossed the border and the Smith government, generally sympathetic to all things MAGA, declared Alberta would ban the electronic counting. Coincidence?

Was anyone calling for that move in Alberta? Were there complaints about the accuracy of the electronic tabulations? Not that I recall. I did read, however, that the Alberta government found two cases of voter fraud in the previous provincial election.

Municipal Affairs Minister Rick McIver told reporters in April that the elimination of electronic tabulators “will give confidence to Albertans that their votes are being counted correctly, and bolster their trust in the methods and results of local elections.”

My late mother told me never to use profanity in public, so I’ll simply say ‘bull’ and leave the last four letters to your imagination.

What’s next? Using paper, pencil and a slide rule to devise the province’s next budget? Employing a flock of carrier pigeons to spread the news about what the government plans to do in the upcoming legislative session?

How many people didn’t vote because of the long waits? No one will ever know. While I’m retired and can easily stand in line for more than 60 minutes to vote, dozens or perhaps hundreds of others who have full-time jobs or child-care duties walked into a voting location, saw the line and said to themselves ‘No can do.’ As long as I could be guaranteed to get home in time to watch the Blue Jays’ ALCS-clinching victory, I could wait all day.

Voting used to be so easy. This new system is archaic, ridiculous, primitive, costly and dumb. It’s gotta go.

â€¢ Many people scoffed this past April when Vladimir Guerrero Jr., signed a 14-year extension with Toronto Blue Jays for $500 million. Far too much for an underachiever like the Dominican star, said many people close to the game.

That was then. This is now. Guerrero Jr., has been on fire in the playoffs, through the divisional series and the American League Championship Series. He batted close to.500 during those first two playoff rounds to lead the Blue Jays into the World Series against Los Angeles Dodgers.

And that $500 million? Rogers, the media company that owns the Blue Jays, is getting record television ratings on Sportsnet and boffo ticket prices for the 45,000 seats in the Rogers Centre. The value of all those additional games, in the stadium and on TV, is priceless. Maybe not $500 million, but there are still 14 years to go on that contract, which doesn’t begin until the 2026 season.

Single-game ticket prices on StubHub and Seat Geek at Rogers Centre were running between $1,000 and $2,000 for Games 1, 2 and 6, and more than $3,000 per seat for a potential Game 7. Season-ticket holders, of course, pay far less, but the Blue Jays are probably taking in close to $25 million per game, so it appears as if the $500 million guaranteed for Guerrero Jr., was a pretty good deal for the Jays.