The province’s ban on the use of electronic tabulators in the 2025 Calgary municipal election is set to stretch counting of ballots over two days, meaning Calgarians won’t find out who won races until at least one day after the vote on Oct. 20.
Elections Calgary released a schedule Sept. 19 for counting ballots, with mayoral ballots counted first, then ward races, followed by the counting of school board races for the Calgary Board of Education and the Calgary Catholic School Division.
Those changes from the previous election were a direct result of the increased complexity and staffing required for this election said Kate Martin, Returning Officer for the City of Calgary.
“Everything from having to increase the amount of voting stations—we’re increasing them to 261 that is an approximate 40 per cent increase over what we had in 2021 election—from there, moving on to the number of election workers. We are looking to hire approximately 4,500 election workers. All of our processes are changing as well,” she said.
Elections Calgary estimated that 2,900 ballots would be counted per voting station this election, and a further 633,000 ballots would be counted at the new counting centre located at the Big 4 Building on Stampede Park, which will count advance, mail-in, care facilities and shelters, post-secondary, hospitals, and vote bus ballots.
“It certainly differs this time around from the 2021 general election. In that election you would have seen with the use of tabulators, and the first voting station started reporting just shortly after 8 p.m. This time, what we are expecting is that the 261 voting stations across the city will deliver the results for all contests on the evening of election night, so that will be on October 20,” said Martin.
“What is different this time around is we must use a counting centre, which means that the results from the advance vote period will be counted at the counting centre. The mayoral count will occur on election night, and you can expect to receive the results then the balance of the contest.”
The schedule of ballot counting for the centre will see mayoral votes begin to be counted starting at 7:30 p.m., until approximately midnight. Workers will then pick up counting on Oct. 21 at 10:30 a.m. for councillor votes, followed by counting school board ballots at 2:30 p.m.
The net result for Calgarians will be that 1 a.m. on Oct. 21, the results of the mayoral races will be known while there will be partial counts for both ward councillors and trustees.
Martin said that counting the mayoral ballots first was due to the possibility of recounts needing to occur within the short window provided for challenges by the province.
“Given the hand count, we are looking at the possibility of there being a recount. If a recount will be necessary on a city wide mayoral recount, we will need to simultaneously finish the balance of counting the results, but we also will need to start preparing for any sort of a recount,” she said.
New for the 2025 Calgary election, candidates that see a difference of one-half a percent between the first and second placed finishers in any voting station can request a recount of that polling station. That challenge can only be made by the candidate with the second highest number of votes, and must be made within 72 hours of the official results being posted on Oct. 27.
Judicial recounts must be requested within 19 days of the close of voting stations on Oct. 20.
Martin said the factors that could affect a recount included administrative or technical errors with the counts, or disputes with the number of rejected ballots that would be sufficient to change the outcome of the election.
“We have prepared significantly. We have increased the number of voting stations. We have increased the number of election workers, and we, collectively as Elections Calgary, we will be working as efficiently as we possibly can to deliver those results with integrity. But yes, it will take some time,” she said.
