Recently, Elections Alberta posted a list of those they declared ineligible to run in the upcoming election.
The most prominent person they identified was Alberta Party Leader Stephen Mandel.
Mandel failed to report that he didn’t spend any money seeking his party’s constituency nomination. He won by acclamation. It wasn’t reported due to an oversight, but that didn’t cut any ice with Elections Alberta.
It isn’t even entirely clear that Elections Alberta got the right dates. That will be tested in court later.
What is going on here? The point of the legislation is to make processes transparent and keep “big money” from distorting elections. Clearly, they have lost sight of those principles!
In this singularly undemocratic move, they bar the leader of a political party for a truly trivial oversight. Would they have been so quick to act if it was the premier or the Opposition leader who slipped up like this?
Meanwhile they appear to be OK with “big tax money” being used to fund NDP government advertisements about diversification.
Elections Alberta needs to stop this “gotcha approach” to regulation.
Rick Sloan, St. Albert
