Albertans asked for mail-in ballots for the referendum in numbers Elections Alberta has never seen.
About 658,000 applications came in before Friday's deadline, Elections Alberta said Monday.
In the 2023 provincial election, it received 59,589.
That's roughly 11 times as many.
How fast it grew
The requests piled up from the start.
By Sept. 1, when mail-in packages started going out, Elections Alberta already had about 225,000 requests, nearly four times the total for the entire 2023 election.
By Sept. 17, it had almost 520,000.
By the time applications closed on Sept. 25, it was about 658,000. That's nearly 140,000 more in the final eight days.
Elections Alberta says the final figure may shift slightly as the last requests are entered into its system.
Why so many people want to vote by mail
Elections Alberta has pointed to a few reasons.
Voters no longer have to give a reason to request a special ballot. The "vote anywhere" option has ended, so people can't cast a ballot at any polling station in the province.
And there's the length of the ballot itself. Albertans are voting on 10 questions. Elections Alberta has said some people may want time at home to read and think through them before they vote.
Nearly 100,000 have already voted
Asking for a ballot isn't the same as voting.
Of the roughly 658,000 applications, nearly 100,000 completed ballots are already back.
Once a returned package is received and verified, Elections Alberta marks that person as having voted and removes them from the voters list. That stops anyone from voting once by mail and again in person.
It also means more than half a million requested ballots were still out as of Monday.
Have a mail-in ballot? Mail it by Oct. 9
Completed ballots must be received by Elections Alberta by 5 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 16.
That's a receipt deadline, not a postmark deadline. Anything that arrives after 5 p.m. on Oct. 16 is rejected.
Canada Post's recommended date to mail a ballot from within Alberta is Oct. 9.
A few other rules:
You can't drop it off. Completed special ballots can't be delivered in person to Elections Alberta or a returning office. They have to come by mail.
Include your ID. The package needs a copy of accepted identification.
Sign the declaration included in the package.
You can track your ballot
When you applied, Elections Alberta gave you a tracking link. It shows whether your application was processed, whether your package was sent, and whether your completed ballot has been received.
Elections Alberta special ballot information →
If your ballot doesn't make it
There's a backup.
If your special ballot hasn't been received and processed by 5 p.m. on Oct. 18, you won't be marked as having voted, and you can still vote in person at your assigned polling place on Oct. 19.
If you're worried your ballot won't arrive in time, you can also vote at an advance poll.
One catch: if you vote in advance first, your name comes off the voters list, and any mail-in ballot that arrives afterward is rejected.
The deadline was moved up two weeks
Sept. 25 wasn't the original cutoff.
Applications were first supposed to stay open until Oct. 9. Elections Alberta moved the deadline up after consulting service providers.
Chief Electoral Officer Gordon McClure said the change was meant to leave enough time for packages to go out and come back before Oct. 16. The Thanksgiving long weekend, with Oct. 12 a holiday, was part of the calculation.
What Albertans are voting on
The Oct. 19 referendum has 10 questions.
Nine are yes-or-no questions. They cover immigration, eligibility for provincially funded services, a residency period before some temporary residents can access social supports, possible health and education premiums for some temporary residents, proof of citizenship to vote provincially, judicial appointments, the Senate, opting out of federal programs, and the balance between provincial and federal laws.
Question 10 asks voters to choose between two options: that Alberta should remain a province of Canada, or that the Alberta government should begin the constitutional process needed to hold a binding provincial referendum on separation.
The result of Question 10 itself is not binding.
At in-person polls, each question gets its own ballot. Elections Alberta expects about 34 million ballots to be used. Mail-in ballots are all white rather than colour-coded.
Counting will take longer than usual
Ten questions means a lot more counting.
Question 10 is counted first. Once that's done at a voting station, workers move on to the other nine.
Because there are more than seven questions, the unofficial count has to be finished within 48 hours after polls close.
The official results will be announced on Oct. 29 at 10 a.m.
Elections Alberta is still hiring
Running a vote this size takes tens of thousands of people.
Elections Alberta says it has hired more than 34,000 workers after receiving almost 59,000 applications.
It still needs election officers in some rural parts of northern and southern Alberta, including around Peace River, Fort McMurray and Rocky Mountain House.
See Elections Alberta's openings →
Key dates
Sept. 25: Deadline to request a special ballot (passed)
Oct. 9: Canada Post's recommended date to mail a completed ballot within Alberta
Oct. 13 to 17: Advance voting
Oct. 16, 5 p.m.: Completed mail-in ballots must be received
Oct. 18, 5 p.m.: If your ballot hasn't been processed by now, you can vote in person
Oct. 19: Referendum day
Oct. 29, 10 a.m.: Official results announced
Sources
Special Ballots, Elections Alberta
Referendum, Elections Alberta
Important Referendum Information, May 2026, Elections Alberta
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