As Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers famously sang “the waiting is the hardest part.”
Polls have closed on Election Day for the 2025 Municipal General Election. Due to the changes to the Municipal Elections Act, votes will be counted by hand rather than by electronic tabulators. The change may impact the speed in which results will become available.
Marcie McKinnon, Legislative Clerk and Returning Officer for the Town of Olds, notes that at 8 o’clock they will allow all of the voters to finish and once they have all cleared the polling station, the election night crew will lock the doors, tear down and reset up for the counting poll, and begin the hand count. McKinnon mentions that they had about eight or nine Town of Olds staff members as the election night crew in 2021, but for 2025 they have seven Town staff members plus approximately 21 community members – so about three times as many people working on it this time around.
She suspects it will be four to six hours minimum for the results to be tabulated but they “intend to finish the count tonight” and send out the unofficial results. The results will become official on Friday, October 24th at noon.
Races for the Mayor’s chair are taking place during this election in places around the region including Olds, Bowden, Carstairs, Didsbury, and Innisfail. Sundre Mayor Richard Warnock was re-elected by acclamation.
Mountain View County has races for the council seat in five of its seven Divisions. Jennifer Lutz in Division 7 – Rural Olds and Tiffany Nixon in Division 4 – Bergen-Elkton were re-elected by acclamation as part of this year’s municipal election.
Results will be posted by mymountainviewnow.com staff throughout the evening as they become available.
