A student guide to the Alberta provincial election
By Julieanne Acosta, Eula Mengullo, Nazeefa Ahmed, May 23 2023—
With election day coming up on May 29, many Albertans are getting ready to cast their votes. Leading up to election day, however, Albertans are able to vote in advance starting today through May 27.
To vote in this election individuals must be a Canadian citizen, be at least 18 years of age on election day and be ordinarily resident in Alberta. The latter means that students studying in Alberta, as well as any Albertan student studying out of province are eligible to vote as long as they consider Alberta their ordinary residence. A person may only have one place of ordinary residence and it must be the place where the person lives and sleeps and when they are absent from it, they intend to return.
Advanced voting stations are commonly in malls, community centres libraries, universities or other public buildings to provide voters with convenient access to them. Voters may vote at any advanced voting location. On election day, every voter is assigned a voting location based on their residence and may only vote at that location should they not vote in advance.
So how does the provincial election work?
The provincial election seeks to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. There are 87 seats available in the Legislative Assembly — each seat is attributed to a specific electoral division or a constituency. This ensures that all communities of Alberta are well-represented in our provincial government. Candidates in those constituencies are vying to be a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) which will allow them to represent their respective divisions. Each candidate is associated with a political party registered with Elections Alberta.
Voters will cast their votes for a candidate running in their constituency. Candidates in each electoral division who win the highest number of votes from their community will become the MLA and gain a seat in the Legislative Assembly. The leader of the political party with the most winning candidates becomes the Premier of Alberta.
While there are many political parties registered for this election, the four parties running in the Calgary–Varsity constituency — in which the U of C is located — are the United Conservative Party (UCP), Alberta New Democratic Party (NDP), Wildrose Loyalty Coalition (WLC) and the Solidarity Movement of Alberta (SM). Each party comes with different ideas on how to better the province.
Over the past week, the Gauntlet has worked to provide summaries of each candidate running in the Calgary–Varsity constituency to provide students with another outlet to learn more about the candidates.
Meet the candidates of the 2023 provincial election: Calgary–Varsity division
Jason Copping (UCP)
Luanne Metz (NDP)
Oaklen Davidsen (WLC)
Kent Liang (SM)
To learn more about the elections visit the Elections Alberta website.