Monday, voters in the City of Lethbridge will cast their ballots to decide who will represent them over the next four years in the eight councillor positions, the mayoral position and school trustee positions.
There are three super voting stations in Lethbridge, located at the Lethbridge Trade and Convention Centre, the Cor Van Raay YMCA at the Cavendish Farms Centre and the Trinity Reformed Church. The voting stations will be open from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m., and if there is a line at 8 p.m., those who are in line will still be able to cast their ballot.
Back when the candidate list was confirmed in September, Returning Officer Bonnie Hilford told mylethbridgenow.com that, based on the voter turnout from 2021, it is estimated that there will be around 100,000 ballots that will need to be hand-counted. She says the hope is to have the election results by Wednesday afternoon, if not earlier.
“We anticipate it will take almost 20 hours for 20 teams of four people, counting consecutively,” she said. “We will be counting Monday night, but we will not have any full contest results by then. We’ll try our best to provide at least daily results, but since hand counting is uncharted territory for us, we cannot guarantee anything at this time.”
In the first four days of early voting, Hilford confirmed 2,832 people cast their ballots, which is 3.2 per cent of the 88,647 eligible voters in Lethbridge. That is down from the number of people who cast their ballot in the first four days of voting in 2021, which was 3,950 people.
