Accepting the conspiracy theories of her Take Back Alberta (TBA) supporters concerning machine vote tabulators (adopted from the US MAGA election deniers), our premier has banned the use of them in Alberta elections. Not only will this delay the election results by many days when we used to have them the same night, but St. Albert City staff have estimated that hand counting will cost an additional $669,500. This will result in a tax increase to St. Albert taxpayers. As our mayor has pointed out, Ms. Smith and her government to date have not been able to describe why hand ballot counting has been mandated. Machine tabulation has been used in Alberta elections for decades. Yet she continues to refuse to reverse her ban in spite of the Alberta Municipalities Association passing a resolution asking her to do so.
For this and several other reasons, in the next election I won't be voting for the UCP candidate. Since there will not be any other candidate that I would be prepared to support, I won't be voting at all.
Rick Hilborn, St. Albert
