‘Colossal undertaking’: Elections Alberta recruiting 60K people to work fall referendum
‘Colossal undertaking’: Elections Alberta recruiting 60K people to work fall referendum
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/elections-alberta-recruitment-campaign-9.7227460
Publish Date: 2026-06-08 19:44:00
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Elections Alberta is seeking tens of thousands of people to staff the upcoming referendum, in what it calls the largest electoral worker recruitment campaign in the province’s history.
The agency said it’s seeking to hire a minimum of 60,000 workers to facilitate the Oct. 19 referendum.
The high number of workers is needed in order to complete the unofficial ballot count within the 48-hour deadline, Elections Alberta said in a news release on Monday.
“This referendum will be a colossal undertaking and requires Albertans to work together to deliver the upcoming referendum,” said Gordon McClure, Alberta’s chief electoral officer.
“Working with us in the coming months provides a great opportunity for students, teams, community groups and Albertans from all walks of life to get involved in the democratic process.”
Elections Alberta will print 45 million ballots for the 10-question October referendum. In comparison, during the 2023 provincial general election, 1.8 million ballots were cast.
One of the ballots will feature a question on whether voters in Alberta should remain a province of Canada, or whether the government should start the legal process to hold a binding referendum on separation.
Jennifer Maskoske, director of election operations for Elections Alberta, said there will be 10 individual ballots on colour-coded paper and 10 individual ballot boxes.
“So it helps us at the end of the night to sort all of those ballots that we then have to hand-count,” she said.
A major effort
Elections Alberta said this will be one of the largest referendum recruitment efforts ever undertaken in Canada.
For context, the 1995 Quebec referendum required 57,000 electoral workers to assist the 4.8 million voters and manage polling…
