The City of Lethbridge is responding to concerns about new rules for the 2025 municipal election. (Photo: Lethbridge News Now)

By David Opinko

Concerns raised with new municipal election rules as October vote approaches

Jul 15, 2025 | 3:28 PM

A new report commissioned for the City of Lethbridge raises several issues with new regulations for this fall’s municipal elections.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) examined Bill 20, which was passed by the Alberta Government in late 2024, and came back to city council with a report at Tuesday’s meeting. The province touts the legislation as making local elections as free, fair and transparent as possible.

Bonnie Hillford, City Clerk and Returning Officer at the City of Lethbridge, however, says she has major concerns with Bill 20’s Local Authorities Election Act (LAEA) and Election Bylaw 6473. Some of these issues can be dealt with before the 2025 vote, while others will have to remain.

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The new rules require that advance ballots be kept at the voting stations, potentially for several days, prior to being counted.

“The legislation said, for at-large election systems, which we are, the ballots would stay at those facilities. We were concerned that they would be locked in a closet and not secure,” says Hillford.

The City has instead decided to move the marked ballots to a locked safe at City Hall.

Now that electronic voting machines have been outlawed in Alberta, municipal officials were worried about how long it would take to count all of the votes. Between the ballots for mayor, council and the two local school boards, there could be around 100,000 ballots.

It is expected that as many as 600 volunteers and staff members will be involved with the election process in Lethbridge this year, compared to just 238 in the 2021 vote.

Hillford says staff will work until midnight on election night, which is Monday, October 20, and continue counting the following morning.

She hopes to have the mayoral ballots counted before the shifts end on Monday. The full, unofficial results should be available by Wednesday afternoon.

The additional staffing and time will add at least $300,000 to the cost of running the city’s election.

Councillor Rajko Dodic said the Alberta Government would not provide any help in covering the additional costs, something that he called “stupid” in Tuesday’s council meeting.

Other issues raised in the PwC report include a lack of clarity on acceptable voter ID, the potential risks of counting ballots by hand, and whether voters will need to mark their ballots with an “X” or if any clear indication of voter intent will be accepted.

Just 97 days remain until the voting period kicks off, which takes place October 8-20.

Hillford says that there is still a lot of work to do in advance of that, but she is confident that everything will be ready in time.

For potentially the first time, the City of Lethbridge is required to keep a voter list for the municipal election with the names of everyone who is registered.

Voters will have until August 15 to add their names to the list, but anyone who misses that deadline can still register in person when they go to vote.

Use this link to read the full report from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

More information on the 2025 municipal election can be found on lethbridge.ca/election.

Coverage of the election, including candidate profiles, can be found here.

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