Redraw of electoral boundaries would present challenging timeline: Elections Alberta

Pedestrians walk past an advance polling station sign outside Calgary City Hall in Calgary, Alta., Friday, April 12, 2019. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh)

Alberta’s elections agency says a government decision to take a second run at redrawing provincial ridings will be a challenge as the clock ticks toward an October 2027 vote.

A spokesperson for Elections Alberta, Robyn Bell, said in an email that the agency needs at least 1 1/2 years, if not two years, to recalibrate its systems and election plans with new ridings.

But Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservatives have thrown a wrench into that plan.

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Smith told the house this week they will soon introduce a motion to revisit recently proposed boundary changes, with a fall deadline to get the work done.

The new review will be overseen by a UCP-majority committee of MLAs and would leave Elections Alberta with about one year before the next election if the deadline is met.

“Reducing the preparation time will most certainly impact the cost of implementation, as (is) the case with most large-scale projects,” Bell said.

She said once it receives the riding maps, the agency needs to update its computer systems, internal election management software and public-facing websites while also planning for new polling stations and returning offices.

It also needs to produce new forms, maps and other documentation, and then educate the public on everything that’s changed, Bell said.

Alberta’s electoral boundaries have become a source of controversy as recent recommendations on new ridings from a bipartisan commission split along party lines and put forward profoundly different proposals.

The UCP-appointees on that commission formed a minority opinion. They protested the majority’s proposal to dissolve two rural ridings and add seats in Edmonton and Calgary to match the province’s shifting population. 

The minority proposed creating more than a dozen rural and urban hybrid ridings that the majority believes would favour the rural-dominant UCP come election time.

The majority group, formed by commission chair and judge Dallas Miller along with two NDP-appointees, called the minority’s proposal indefensible and a clear attempt at gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering is a term for redrawing voting boundaries in order to favour one political party.

Miller, in his own separate recommendation, urged the government not to move forward with the minority’s maps. If the province couldn’t accept the majority’s opinion, Miller suggested increasing the number of legislature seats by four rather than two to preserve rural representation.

Smith says that’s what the government is doing, and denies accusations from the Opposition NDP that she’s just taking a roundabout way of designing riding maps to rig the 2027 election in the UCP’s favour.

NDP justice critic Irfan Sabir said in a statement Friday that the concerns raised by Elections Alberta show Smith’s government is willing to risk the integrity of the province’s elections to stay in power.

“Of course the UCP government didn’t consider the time and resources it would take to implement their rigged boundaries map,” Sabir said.

“Election integrity matters but not for the UCP. This is who they are.”

A spokesperson for the UCP caucus as well as press secretaries for Smith and her justice minister did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The new redrawing the government is initiating will see a second bipartisan panel with the same membership structure develop new maps using the same information and public hearing feedback collected by the first commission. This panel will report to the committee of MLAs.

Smith was scheduled to speak at an unrelated press conference later Friday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 17, 2026.