John Bolton - Alberta's mail-in ballots... should you be worried？

00:00:00.000 It's morning again in the West and Alberta is waking from a long, dark night.

00:00:13.520 Today Albertans go to work knowing their democratic vote for independence allows them to take

00:00:18.080 home more of what they earn.

00:00:20.680 Young people and married couples feel comfortable and secure in knowing they now can afford

00:00:25.740 a home, something they thought unthinkable just a short while ago.

00:00:31.120 Today senior citizens feel more secure, with an independent Alberta providing more for

00:00:36.140 them than ever before.

00:00:38.980 And with Alberta keeping more of its wealth and unfettered by the unfair government in

00:00:43.460 Ottawa, Albertans are building hospitals, schools and pipelines and look forward with

00:00:49.080 optimism for the future.

00:00:51.920 morning again in the West, a single mark on a ballot for independence and Albertans are more

00:00:57.300 confident, prosperous and free. Well, thank you very much for that intro, John. I really appreciate

00:01:11.220 it because Alberta can be prosperous and free. No, my name is vote option two, Jason. I just

00:01:17.300 You just found a way around the rules because if it's your legal name,

00:01:24.180 you know, they can't stop you now.

00:01:25.340 Can they?

00:01:26.080 Well, no, you know, I, I put, I put that on my mail-in ballot.

00:01:32.080 Corey Morgan.

00:01:32.800 We've got Corey here as well.

00:01:33.900 Corey is just having some technical glitches here.

00:01:36.580 He's got, he's got to move in, move into the city with us.

00:01:39.140 Corey out from, he's out in the British area right now.

00:01:41.260 Can, can you hear us?

00:01:42.220 Okay, sir.

00:01:42.780 i think he's having some some technical issues we'll bring him in as soon as we can well mark

00:01:51.920 carney's doing whatever he can to stop that conversation isn't it that's that's right we'll

00:01:57.060 bring cory in when we can we'll get him here as soon as possible we've got some people here i'm

00:02:01.220 just checking some of the chats coming in now watching from millets bruce grove howdy

00:02:05.820 beaumont alberta as well if you've got any questions please uh send them to us we'd love

00:02:11.060 to hear from you uh certainly people have been asking a lot of questions about this one jason

00:02:15.280 uh for several weeks i think just let me just check here um it was on september 1st at elections

00:02:22.060 alberta i'm just checking the web page here uh they had a page up saying voters reminded of

00:02:27.020 changes to the voting experience as referendum special ballot mailing began so that was

00:02:31.280 the first of september that they put that up and i think today uh the number was 658 000 mail-in

00:02:39.080 ballots something like that is and and just think about this i think in the provincial election the

00:02:43.800 last time in 2023 1.7 million people voted so that's an incredible amount of people who have

00:02:51.520 signed up for mail-in ballots so the question is should we be concerned about this should you be

00:02:57.440 concerned that this is rigged we need to make it too big to rig you hear that but is it rigged

00:03:02.940 people are really concerned about this what are your thoughts and i know you signed up for one

00:03:07.380 of the mail-in ballots as well. So we'll find out about that experience. Well, I think there's a

00:03:11.400 several, that's a broad question on whether or not there's concerns, because there's certainly

00:03:15.580 going to be concerns with any election, especially when humans are involved, there's always mistakes

00:03:20.500 and some nefarious figures that get themselves involved. But your bigger question is, is this

00:03:26.060 rigged? That's going to be a tough one to say at this stage, because if it goes our way, then of

00:03:30.580 course the other side is going to be complaining that way. You saw that with the U.S. elections,

00:03:34.200 When Trump won, it was four years of the election got rigged.

00:03:37.680 When Biden won, it was four more years of that from the other side.

00:03:41.120 And now when Trump won the second time, you heard it again.

00:03:44.300 I think they're still counting hanging chads from the 2000 election.

00:03:50.340 You remember that one?

00:03:52.440 I do.

00:03:52.960 Between Al Gore and George Bush.

00:03:54.460 I mean, that one is still being contested in the United States of America.

00:03:58.660 But yeah, I mean, there's a lot of people really losing their minds over this one, Jason.

00:04:03.000 Can you hear us okay, Corey, if we got you?

00:04:05.500 I'm hearing you all right.

00:04:06.480 I'm on my crappy laptop now, thus the terrible picture and probably rotten sound,

00:04:10.740 but it's working better than what I had a moment ago.

00:04:12.520 I'm not sure what happened.

00:04:14.120 I'll be honest, your sound is great, and you got the Alberta blue look on you,

00:04:18.660 so I don't see anything wrong with your picture at all.

00:04:20.380 I've been smurfed head to toe here, it seems.

00:04:23.880 No, that works great.

00:04:25.080 Corey, the question off the top here from John is,

00:04:27.860 are you concerned about the mail-in ballots, and do you think that this is being rigged?

00:04:33.000 yes i'm concerned no i don't think it's being rigged uh i i've worked in too many elections

00:04:38.200 i know people have very good reasons to be cynical of the government and not to trust

00:04:43.080 bureaucracies and that the elections alberta has been behaving terribly throughout this thing

00:04:48.760 but to reasonably rig something for this system is exceedingly difficult and exceedingly unlikely

00:04:55.720 the bigger worry though is that they're going to make a complete catastrophe of it

00:04:59.640 i do worry that people have perhaps somebody's been ordering loads and loads of these more as

00:05:04.920 an almost sabotage uh technique to discredit the whole process uh i'd be very curious to

00:05:11.560 see how many of those 680 000 actually get filled in with photocopied id and properly returned and

00:05:17.320 matched up with a voters list uh so i'm very concerned and and when you have all that gong

00:05:22.440 shot caught a bit of what you guys were talking about it will lead to people though distrusting

00:05:26.440 the system and thinking there really was funny business perhaps to rig it one way or another

00:05:30.080 on either side so it's looking really bad they never should have changed it from the old system

00:05:35.740 of having to declare that you wouldn't be available that day and and just get people to vote in person

00:05:40.040 well a couple of the errors that i see at this stage and i think is very fair criticism of

00:05:45.300 elections alberta is how they're handling the communications uh and also responding to people

00:05:50.020 they're kind of being dismissive online and just saying hey you got misinformation instead of

00:05:53.940 actually explaining things and i just want to be full disclosure we did invite elections alberta

00:05:58.240 to be part of this uh show tonight uh they declined to do it live they asked me for a list

00:06:03.520 of questions that they will respond back to us with and i gave it to them and then they responded

00:06:08.880 back and said we'll get that to you tomorrow and that was about an hour and a half ago so one of

00:06:13.400 the questions i asked him cory was precisely what you asked there of the 680 000 how many are

00:06:18.940 actually approved and being mailed out and by the end of the election we should be able to get

00:06:23.400 numbers like how many were returned and how many were actually valid and how many were actually

00:06:26.920 ballots and counted. Those numbers should shrink on every stage there. But we have seen a lot of

00:06:33.420 people putting in requests online and sharing it online from other provinces and claiming that

00:06:38.920 that's going to be a counted vote on their part. But I want to kind of dispel that one pretty

00:06:43.640 quickly here, Corey. Are you familiar with the Elections Alberta process when it comes to

00:06:48.180 validating the information after the application is done online?

00:06:51.760 Yeah, very much so. And again, I used to work in the oil field.

00:06:54.920 I'd be out of province and out of country.

00:06:56.360 I could get ballots to where I was. That wasn't the point.

00:06:59.520 You just have to prove that you're an eligible voter when you return that

00:07:03.060 package. And there's two envelopes. So just to confirm to people,

00:07:06.480 your ballots are sealed into one.

00:07:07.920 It's an inner envelope and the outer envelope is going to have the photocopy

00:07:11.760 of your identification and they will match that up against the electors lists.

00:07:15.760 and if it doesn't match up they'll have to do more follow-up on it or find a way to get you

00:07:21.340 registered as a voter that's why those electors lists I mean that was a whole separate issue

00:07:24.820 but are so critical in having all of the people registered on them it gives another check for

00:07:29.300 when you're determining who's eligible to vote and who has voted already and who hasn't because

00:07:33.560 some other people said well they'll vote by mail and then they'll come vote six times when they get

00:07:36.820 home no it doesn't work that way you will be registered as having cast your ballot and then

00:07:42.720 you won't be able to cast another one at another station or mail in a second one or anything like

00:07:47.460 that. It does get tracked. Again, though, the sheer volume, the sheer ineptitude, the bad

00:07:53.160 communications, the understaffing. I mean, when we're looking at the logistics of dealing with

00:07:59.040 if indeed 400,000 people do mail these things back, I know 680 requested, I got a sneaking

00:08:04.980 suspicion hundreds of thousands won't actually come back. That's still an incredible amount of

00:08:10.860 ballots to try and count in a reasonable time and without screwing things up. Yeah, I'm concerned

00:08:16.140 that it could be forever that they take to count these. I mean, when you go into vote, they check

00:08:20.580 your ID, you go in, yeah, we've got 10 questions, they're going to be able to count those pretty

00:08:24.380 quickly. But to validate all of this paperwork that's coming through, I can't imagine they can

00:08:28.720 get this done in a timely matter here. So I hope, hopefully, this doesn't hold things up forever.

00:08:34.800 Um, are people, are people just being a little bit over the top when they think that this is

00:08:41.760 going to, is being rigged somehow by elections, Alberta, or by the powers that be in this

00:08:46.780 province to ensure that we don't, don't win.

00:08:49.120 I'm going to ask that.

00:08:49.940 It might sound like, well, I think it's a legitimate question and I want to ask it for

00:08:54.020 people who are online right now thinking that.

00:08:57.340 And before I jump to that one too, I just want to throw in one more piece.

00:09:00.760 Cause I've actually done the mail-in ballot application.

00:09:02.980 So I wanted to test the process instead of just kind of assuming what works.

00:09:08.240 You do have to provide your residential address.

00:09:10.680 You do have to provide your birth date and your name.

00:09:13.120 And then that's an application.

00:09:14.720 The approval step, which took six days, validates that against the voter registry.

00:09:19.980 So if you're not on the voter registry, even at that stage, you'll get a message.

00:09:24.140 And I've seen a screenshot shared by one of our followers when his wife wasn't in voter registry.

00:09:29.260 And you get back a message that says you're not on voter registry.

00:09:32.360 so you can't get this package you need to get yourself on the voter registry and that's where

00:09:36.400 citizenship id your driver's license comes into play to be on the voter registry so there is one

00:09:42.160 step corey before they even mail it out which is to confirm what you provided in your application

00:09:46.780 does match up to the records yes and then the other part is when those come back if you've

00:09:53.480 returned your package as i was saying there's two envelopes just to kind of concern that they can

00:09:58.060 start the process i believe rather earlier on the outer envelopes so they can start verifying those

00:10:02.940 and getting the ballots they'll remain sealed but they can check okay this package was returned we

00:10:07.660 can now check off this voter their identification checks it checks with the application and these

00:10:12.380 ballots now go over here and that's all supervised as well by by scrutineers in that process so that

00:10:17.420 will give them a bit of time to start that first step anyway so they're not going to be validating

00:10:21.820 them all on october 19th they're still going to be counting them though which is still going to be

00:10:25.260 an incredible task or even validating them between now and then. But it's not quite all

00:10:31.160 going to be stuffed into one day, at least for that outer envelope. You know, there's more things

00:10:35.220 to discuss here tonight as well. I mean, you mentioned the word scrutineers. We need to assure

00:10:41.200 people that we need more people to work. Apparently, they're looking for 60,000 people to work this

00:10:46.980 election. They've had 50,000 or so applications and 34,000 have been hired three weeks out. So

00:10:53.180 We need more people to work this and it's actually working.

00:10:56.400 They're hiring people here, but scrutineers are going to be real important here. 0.98

00:10:59.840 And, you know, we're going to have Tanya Clemens on in a few minutes from Let Alberta Decide.

00:11:04.460 And I mentioned to Keith Wilson about two weeks ago saying, you know, did you hear, you know, what are we going to be doing?

00:11:09.280 Are we going to have people in the room when they're counting these mail-in ballots?

00:11:12.200 It sounds like there's going to be, I think at the time, maybe three or four hundred thousand and there could be twice that many.

00:11:16.700 So we'll talk to Tanya about that and see if that's something they've been discussed.

00:11:20.500 You guys are both third party advertisers as well.

00:11:23.180 um you know you're uh you're interested we're all interested in what's going on here but we need

00:11:28.320 people to uh to volunteer their time or at least you know apply online in fact what i'll do right

00:11:33.880 now is i'll put a link on my channel uh if you want to apply uh to to work this uh this referendum

00:11:40.420 uh so that you can be part of that and i'll put it into the chat as well so people uh can click

00:11:45.320 on that if they're interested in doing that but but for goodness sakes we need people in the room

00:11:49.620 making sure that these things are counted correctly and can we do that are we going to

00:11:54.320 have enough people there on our side and i'm glad you said that because here's a question i'll bring

00:11:59.200 up or a comment here from gb jarvi uh likely there will be issues independence has no way to

00:12:05.320 scrutinize these mail-in ballots so gb just to put your mind at ease i personally know people

00:12:11.460 that we put on the scrutinator list that became scrutineers and they are people that are very

00:12:16.560 uh sympathetic to what's going on in Alberta and I also know people who have gone through the

00:12:22.040 training and when I hear their reports they're telling me there's several people from both sides

00:12:28.160 uh in there doing the training to be part of this so there's a lot of people who are already doing

00:12:33.480 that and I would encourage you to follow what John just said there and if you know what you

00:12:38.300 want to be there and make sure these things are being opened and counted properly there's a lot

00:12:43.180 of paid positions still available for that so go ahead and apply for that they are looking to fill

00:12:48.300 those and they are taking anybody that has a clean criminal record uh passes a quick little vetting

00:12:53.960 and getting in there and i know several people are both being paid to be there as employees of

00:12:58.840 elections alberta and scrutineers um that used our scrutineer sign up as a third party advertiser to

00:13:04.880 get in there so both of them are in there and cory's correct when the mail-in ballots returned

00:13:10.660 the sealed ballots stay inside so even the person opening that envelope has no idea what you're

00:13:15.940 voting it's a sealed ballot all they know is you have your id you sign a declaration they check it

00:13:21.020 against their records make sure the signature matches and then put that sealed ballot the

00:13:25.380 ballots because there's 10 in this one uh into the boxes in front of scrutineers the entire time

00:13:30.200 so mail-in ballots actually get double scrutineered at the time the envelopes open and at the time that

00:13:35.520 the ballot gets opened later so both of those things happen with scrutineers from all sides

00:13:40.280 So thanks, John, for bringing that up.

00:13:42.600 And then, Corey, there was one more thing that people were concerned about.

00:13:46.360 You also provided a list of scrutineers.

00:13:49.240 In Elections Alberta had communication to us as third-party advertisers saying,

00:13:52.520 hey, give us a list, and we'll see what we can do with it.

00:13:55.960 Are you aware of anybody on your list actually becoming a scrutineer?

00:13:59.540 I didn't.

00:14:00.280 I've got to be honest, I ended up getting a small amount and forwarding that

00:14:03.200 because if you remember farther back, I thought for a short time

00:14:06.160 we could partner with an existing political party.

00:14:08.180 with that okay well we'll just save the trouble we'll do it through that and i didn't go further

00:14:11.780 with ours until discovering after starting that initiative that only the ndp and ucp can put

00:14:17.700 scrutineers forward as parties uh but i i kind of uh yeah left the scrutineering off on mine so i

00:14:23.940 haven't had ones through rtpa going through but sort of to what you were saying as well people

00:14:29.780 do have to remember there's going to be hundreds i don't know maybe even thousands i doubt there's

00:14:33.700 that many of us scrutineers through the united conservative party some of whom are going to be

00:14:37.700 be pro-independent, some aren't, but there's going to be a lot of, you know, principled eyes

00:14:42.620 watching this process throughout most of the steps. It's too bad that, again, it comes back

00:14:49.400 to Elections Alberta and their competence, I think, and their communication. It was really

00:14:53.280 confusing as to how it would work with third-party advertisers getting scrutineers. I can understand

00:14:58.060 why they don't want to open the floodgates and have 100 people at every polling station tripping

00:15:02.100 over each other and causing challenges, but at the same time, you want to allow as many diverse

00:15:07.440 voices they really should have broken that up i think by tpa even give it a limit then say okay

00:15:12.080 every tpa can put in 20 and we can talk about the different uh constituencies they could put

00:15:17.440 scrutineers into or something like that but having it where as you said they just submit a list okay

00:15:22.560 any of the spots where the parties haven't filled we might at our discretion pick people and fill

00:15:26.320 those spots i'm glad to hear that some ears were picked then i i wasn't sure how that was all going

00:15:30.240 to work so that's good to hear i'm just i'm just wondering i'm kind of looking at this from the

00:15:34.480 standpoint, I was always best at asking the questions. It's what I did in my previous life.

00:15:39.120 But why did so many people sign up to do this like this? I never even dawned on me to get a

00:15:45.320 mail-in ballot. I mean, you'd only be guessing, but I'm just wondering why so many people? I mean,

00:15:51.260 I guess it's easy to do from your house. I plan on going to an advanced ballot. We'll tell you

00:15:55.840 when those are happening, a vote in just a few minutes. But why so many? And we're talking up

00:16:01.460 almost 700,000 people here. It's just mind-boggling. Well, there's two answers to that,

00:16:07.200 John. The first one is kind of the broad one, which is there's a lot of people participating

00:16:10.700 in this one. And very early elections, Alberta said there'll be like an 85% participation rate

00:16:15.560 in this one, which is high for any election or referendum in Alberta. But the second one is Bill

00:16:20.840 54 changed the requirement that used to be there for special ballots that had to give a specific

00:16:27.520 reason and about one of the valid reasons to be there like you won't be in the province at the

00:16:31.860 time um you can't physically make it you have a valid reason to request a special ballot uh so in

00:16:38.540 the last provincial election that was in place that was removed with bill 54 and you did not

00:16:43.660 need a reason to request it now there's going to be criticisms on whether or not that was the right

00:16:47.760 thing or not and i'm sure if you know things you know go the wrong way during this election a lot

00:16:53.260 people are going to criticize that decision but that's why you're seeing the numbers about 10

00:16:57.180 times what it would normally be is because anybody can request one now now unlike the u.s election

00:17:03.140 where we heard about this in the u.s provincial side of presidential side of things there were

00:17:08.600 many states that actually just mailed ballots to everybody they just sent them out to everybody on

00:17:14.260 their list so that you know caused a lot of concern because even people were showing up without id to

00:17:19.680 vote because in some of these states you've received a mail

00:17:21.760 ballot and you didn't need ID to vote

00:17:23.640 which really opens that up to

00:17:25.600 fraud quite a bit. But here

00:17:27.580 in Alberta you had to request it, you had

00:17:29.560 to be proven that you had

00:17:31.320 yourself on the list already, the voter list

00:17:33.600 already, and you do need ID.

00:17:35.980 Another thing, John,

00:17:37.540 that Bill 54 removed

00:17:39.220 which some people should be happy about is

00:17:41.580 vouching for the polls.

00:17:43.480 You can't do that anymore. So that was

00:17:45.600 another way for people to kind of get around the ID

00:17:47.660 requirement because they'd have somebody say, I know

00:17:49.560 this person they're okay i'll sign for them and then they vote that's been removed you can't do

00:17:54.080 that and there's a few other things that secure down the election hand counted ballot paper ballots

00:17:59.180 so no machines uh you have to vote within your riding you can't just be anywhere in alberta and

00:18:04.500 vote you have to go to your riding uh so there's a few other things they put in place to secure it

00:18:08.220 up yeah and just for that sheer volume a few of the campaigns including my own but i think even

00:18:13.720 more effectively on the side of the federalist side they were pushing right off the bat to get

00:18:19.160 their supporters to get mail-in ballots they actively told everybody get your mail-in ballots

00:18:23.920 and i kind of followed suit uh in saying into my streams and telling people you know following us

00:18:29.080 just again the logistics i mean i i don't like this whole thing i think we should go back to

00:18:34.080 somebody should only get a mail-in ballot if they must because they're working out of province or

00:18:38.200 something but as it is the toothpaste is out of the tube and we do have a messed up you know uh

00:18:44.420 Elections Alberta trying to get it together. We got 10 ballots. I mean, I've stood in long lineups

00:18:49.540 when somebody's just trying to pick what they're going to do on one ballot. It's horrifying to

00:18:54.520 think of some of the grannies are going to spend half an hour and they're trying to determine those 0.88

00:18:57.940 wordy ballots back and forth. It's going to be lined up and people have been warned it's going 0.74

00:19:02.920 to be lined up. So I think a lot of people selected these mail-in ballots just to avoid

00:19:07.280 that possibility coming ahead for them. And hopefully maybe because of all those people

00:19:13.180 asking for it the lineups won't be as bad I still also question whether that many really ordered it

00:19:18.540 I don't know there just seems some weirdness with it I'm not as worried about them getting through

00:19:21.900 on people returning them and voting but it just seems like such a high number even with all of

00:19:26.340 that I don't know it's unprecedented it does and you know I was out at an event um where was I

00:19:32.340 Cardston a while back and you've probably been at events with uh uh Kathy Flett and Angela Tabak

00:19:37.660 they've been asked talking about the first nine questions you know vote yes on the first nine

00:19:41.520 questions are basically what they're saying. And they're extremely long questions. I just can't

00:19:45.440 imagine what it's going to be like on the 19th of October, just to let people know that advanced

00:19:49.960 voting days are the 13th to the 17th. So you might want to go out then. And, you know, other

00:19:55.480 things to discuss here. If you know somebody who can't get out to vote, but they want to vote for

00:19:59.660 Alberta independence, I've got my mother-in-law, I'm going to be taking her to an advanced poll on

00:20:04.420 the 13th to 17th. So we're not waiting around for hours on the 19th. But, you know, secure those

00:20:09.100 people tell them you're willing to pick them up and take them or if you know some people

00:20:12.220 uh that you can help out do that because i get i get email all the time from shut in saying i can't

00:20:17.340 get out they couldn't get out to sign the petition can somebody come to me well we can take these

00:20:21.300 people to the polling but again advanced voting days october 13th to the 17th make it too big to

00:20:26.940 folks you know i mean make these make these mail-in ballots um just part of the process as

00:20:34.100 opposed to being the thing that might spin it one way or the other, but get out and vote and vote

00:20:39.380 option two for sure. Let me put a link here, by the way, for those people who don't know where

00:20:43.960 they're going to vote. There is a place on the Elections Alberta website. I'll put it in the

00:20:48.400 chat as well to let you know where you need to go in your area. And there's a little handy map

00:20:53.300 there for you. So there you go. For sure. And I would second what you're saying there, John,

00:20:58.060 get out and vote even in the advanced polls because the Calgary Shaw election got turned

00:21:03.120 by the advanced polls.

00:21:05.200 And you don't know if you're going to have car trouble,

00:21:07.180 family issues, something comes up,

00:21:09.440 something goes wrong at the ballot

00:21:11.320 place, you forgot your ID at home

00:21:13.160 and then you missed it.

00:21:15.260 Things happen on the

00:21:16.920 day of voting. So if you

00:21:19.260 can get to the advanced

00:21:21.200 polls, do it. Your vote will count.

00:21:23.620 And I don't see anything wrong with that at all.

00:21:25.700 Again, I'm very confident that the scrutineers

00:21:27.400 that are in there, the people that are in there, because

00:21:29.340 it is a mix of everybody from Alberta that's

00:21:31.300 in there. It's going to be fine. I'd rather someone do that than decide not to vote because

00:21:38.180 they're worried about their vote not counting or something bad is going to happen. We will lose

00:21:41.880 more votes that way than just going in there and vote. So I would like to kind of encourage people

00:21:47.580 not to choose not to vote because they're worried about the system. Vote. And now let's be a little

00:21:54.360 bit more honest here, John. Could somebody request a special ballot on behalf of somebody else

00:21:59.800 because they know their information, have it mailed to their house,

00:22:02.760 fill it in, photocopy the ID,

00:22:06.240 go ahead and make the choices on the ballot and send it in.

00:22:09.340 Yeah, that certainly can happen for sure.

00:22:12.560 That would be considered fraud.

00:22:14.220 If you get caught, you could be looking at a criminal charge there.

00:22:17.940 You have to forge the signature

00:22:19.800 because the signature on the declaration is one of the steps.

00:22:22.880 And the number of people doing that, it's always happened.

00:22:26.460 This election isn't going to be any special.

00:22:28.800 but if someone's requesting a ballot say for their grandmother taking it to them asking her

00:22:35.420 what her options are and what she chooses and help her fill it in that's completely legal

00:22:39.660 you're allowed to do that in fact you're encouraged to do that if someone can't do it for themselves

00:22:44.840 but it's against the law to fill it in it was identity theft it's fraud to use someone else's

00:22:50.360 id to fill in the ballot and send it in so the number of people doing that traditionally is very

00:22:55.300 very low. It's not going to sway the vote. And they're putting their own freedom and liberty

00:22:59.900 at risk when they do that. But this election is so different. Yeah. Section 177 provides that

00:23:06.940 someone who commits a corrupt practice is liable to a fine of up to $50,000 in imprisonment for

00:23:11.960 up to two years or both. So that is what happens if you do this. And yeah, there'd have to be,

00:23:18.800 It would have to be wide scale fraud in order for it. I think these mail-in ballots to really

00:23:25.840 make a difference here. I mean, you'd have to have tens of thousands. It would be very difficult to

00:23:30.360 do that. Some of it's a matter of principle. And one of the things I don't like about the advent

00:23:35.840 of so many mail-in ballots too, though, is that for some people, it can steal their agency of a

00:23:41.500 secret ballot. Think of an abusive spouse who gets mail-in ballots brought to the house and then can

00:23:47.520 sit over the other spouse and look over their shoulder and say, you're going to vote this way

00:23:51.840 or I'm going to backhand you. You know, there's a reason that a person that's one of those few

00:23:56.040 rights you have is you can have that little moment of privacy in that little cardboard box and nobody

00:24:00.780 else in the world is going to tell you how you are going to make your vote. We don't have that

00:24:05.480 guarantee of privacy for people when you have mail-in ballots. And it kind of is, as both of

00:24:10.060 you're saying, the volume of that isn't going to be enough that it's going to swing this whole thing,

00:24:13.940 you know more than likely one way or another i mean it could be just a handful of cases across

00:24:17.760 the province where that sort of thing happens but i just hate to think of it happening at all

00:24:21.900 and it could be very easily avoided because this this convenience of a mail-in ballot really isn't

00:24:27.100 something we need to have it should have unfortunately you know it's too late now but

00:24:30.780 it should have been just as it was for people who had no other way to vote people you know a lot of

00:24:36.860 people in the comments i think they're very skeptical i don't i don't know that they trust

00:24:40.660 this at all and i think people will walk away from this live stream and i don't i don't know

00:24:44.700 how many people are going to convince i i'm worried about the number but i'm not worried

00:24:49.780 that it will make a huge difference that's just the way i feel about this maybe maybe i'm being

00:24:53.920 naive are we being naive with this it's too many for sure what i suggest these people that are

00:25:01.360 concerned is go work the election you'll you'll get paid for it to be there if you're so concerned

00:25:07.240 about how it's going to run be one of the people that participates in it because that that door is

00:25:11.880 still open for you unless you have a criminal record and in that case they don't let you get

00:25:15.160 through uh welcome tanya how are those fields going oh they're going they are going we're

00:25:22.120 trying to catch up for a little bit late and harvest this year i i want to get i want to get

00:25:26.520 into the mood of this tanya i'm going to sit here and kind of rumble a little bit like you do while

00:25:30.120 you're in your combine i'm sorry i'm probably bouncing around a bit thanks for joining us

00:25:35.720 thanks very much yeah we've just been talking about the number of mail-in ballots i i think

00:25:39.880 it's 658 000 or thereabouts uh and we've been talking about this and the rules and

00:25:45.720 scrutineering and how people need to get involved and people should volunteer their time or get a

00:25:50.280 job working uh during this referendum in a few weeks they're still looking for a lot of people

00:25:54.360 tens of thousands more people to do this uh you've been working with keith with uh let alberta decide

00:26:01.160 you two are you know you're joined at the hip have you been discussing this are you concerned

00:26:05.800 about this is there anything that you're doing uh in order to make sure that uh this process

00:26:11.320 goes smoothly and and everything's on the up and up after all the ballots and the mail-in ballots

00:26:16.280 have been counted yeah we talk about it quite a bit and it's gone back like a ways just because

00:26:21.960 elections alberta has handled themselves with a lot of anomalies being presented so from back in

00:26:29.080 the petition phase and the way that they counted the petition votes and struck out you know 700

00:26:34.840 votes for every one anomaly they found or error and then to thomas ukazic's not a campaign campaign

00:26:41.640 and how they've handled that so it's definitely i understand why people are questioning the

00:26:46.840 integrity of elections alberta they deserve to be questioned for the way that they've handled

00:26:51.640 things but what we're encouraging people to do is kind of what you guys have said too is

00:26:55.000 get out there and volunteer or be paid to scrutineer to work in the polls and make sure

00:27:02.440 that we're filling those positions with our people so that they can make sure that this

00:27:07.400 referendum is happening fairly and justly and then also i can act as whistleblowers and we're

00:27:13.800 actually going to add a section to our website for whistleblowers if you're there and you see

00:27:19.560 an anomaly and you're working the polls or as a scrutineer there's a place to report it we can

00:27:24.120 start to accumulate that data if it should happen okay good stuff now i got a few questions here

00:27:31.000 from the audience that i'd like to kind of just jump into because uh it's valid so uh kj here

00:27:37.000 says i'm a scrutineer and have already been to elections alberta last sunday so there you go

00:27:41.480 you know somebody who's watching one of our shows at least is a scrutineer is already in there that's

00:27:45.720 good and then we have alicia uh is there a way to verify if you filled out the ballot correctly no

00:27:52.120 alicia actually so be very careful when you do that uh because there's no way to come call you

00:27:57.400 after say hey you know alicia you put a heart instead of an x but what i have heard from people

00:28:02.440 that are working it is they're going to be quite flexible so if you do a check mark instead of an

00:28:06.440 x it's going to go through um they have some training around that because when you're when

00:28:11.640 you're the counter the person actually counts the ballot you have scrutineers over your shoulder

00:28:15.880 watching and those are the things that they're actually looking for if it's not clear like if

00:28:20.600 If you write the word yes into option two, is that your vote?

00:28:24.780 So, no, there is no way that I'm aware of Alicia where they'll contact you and let you know your vote was good.

00:28:30.400 So, just follow the instructions.

00:28:31.840 Be nice and clear with an X in your option and it will count.

00:28:35.920 So, thanks for that question.

00:28:38.040 Brad asks, huge red flag with the amount of special ballots.

00:28:41.140 There's only 51,000 in the 2023 general election.

00:28:44.980 So, having 13 times as many should be cause for concern.

00:28:47.820 Brad, I think we addressed that because it removed the requirements to have a valid reason in order to do it.

00:28:53.760 Plus, this is a very heated referendum, and people like Corey and myself have been telling our followers to go and be participating in this.

00:29:03.480 So there's a lot of reasons why I think it's high.

00:29:06.220 And then a really good question here in the $5 super chat to you, John, it looks like.

00:29:11.940 How many of these requests have been sent out?

00:29:14.400 That's a fantastic number.

00:29:15.700 So we know 650,000 or so has been requested.

00:29:20.680 Requested and mailed are going to be two different numbers.

00:29:23.400 The mailed number is going to be lower because anybody that wasn't valid won't be getting one.

00:29:29.120 And that actually brings us to this next question here from V8 Horse.

00:29:34.120 Jason, I'm sure we have Ontarians and Nova Scotians trying to receive a mail-in ballot at least 60%.

00:29:39.060 Good question, John.

00:29:39.880 But, you know, V8, you can live in Ontario and still have your primary residence in Alberta.

00:29:46.060 You could be working there.

00:29:47.320 A lot of the MPs who live in Alberta work out in Ontario.

00:29:50.340 They would get a special ballot in Ontario.

00:29:52.160 But what you can't do is not be on the voter list and request one.

00:29:55.740 So that's one of the things we talked about.

00:29:57.740 There is a step where they validate you against the voter registry before they mail them out.

00:30:02.020 So hopefully we cover some of those questions.

00:30:04.200 And then this last one from Ray.

00:30:05.280 Go ahead, go ahead, Jason.

00:30:07.120 Yeah, this is the last one in my little list here.

00:30:09.400 Ray says, should an independent auditor count the votes not Elections Alberta?

00:30:13.560 Technically, Ray, Elections Alberta is an independent agency.

00:30:17.560 They're supposed to be nonpartisan.

00:30:19.400 They're not from a party and they're not from the government.

00:30:21.280 They are already independent.

00:30:22.820 They report to the legislature, but they are an independent body.

00:30:26.660 They're supposed to be at least.

00:30:28.240 So that's already in place.

00:30:29.860 I don't know if you could do an independent auditor on an independent body for this,

00:30:34.300 but technically they're supposed to be an independent body.

00:30:37.300 uh john now yeah i just wanted to ask tanya i know that uh cory and jason have talked a little

00:30:43.180 bit about this being third-party advertisers i think i think the idea for the two of them was

00:30:47.980 to try to encourage people to be scrutineers or sign up through their third-party advertisers

00:30:52.080 did did let alberta decide do that as well do you know anybody who has become a scrutinize

00:30:57.680 becoming a scrutineer rather um for the upcoming referendum yeah there's a few people that we have

00:31:04.080 But I know for sure. Originally, when they were kind of the rules were kind of a little fuzzy about if they were going to let third party advertisers have scrutineers there, we were encouraging people to sign up through their parties, primarily through the United Conservative Party, because that way we would ensure that they would make it through into being scrutineers.

00:31:23.540 yeah i actually got an email um from the united conservative party today asking people to sign

00:31:30.760 up by wednesday to volunteer as a scrutineer for the referendum i just got that in today

00:31:34.640 just at five o'clock uh this afternoon okay and then cory um in your past experience with

00:31:43.240 elections like you mentioned off the top you've been part of many of them have you seen this much

00:31:47.620 concern around whether or not it can be held securely and properly? No, but I've also never

00:31:54.420 seen such bias demonstrated by Elections Alberta, and not even so much in the voting at this point

00:32:02.920 or counting, but something that's been hanging over them has been that Thomas Lukasik thing

00:32:07.160 that has just astounded everybody who's looked at it, even federalists, on how on earth do you have

00:32:12.340 this giant third party advertising group blatantly campaigning and you guys refuse to consider it

00:32:17.940 campaigning. It has caused mistrust of their entire organization. And again, I'm not saying

00:32:23.100 that means that this organization is corrupted or they're going to do something wrong, but they did

00:32:26.520 not do themselves any favors. Elections Alberta that I dealt with in past elections was so

00:32:32.240 meticulously unbiased. I mean, that's their whole mandate that, you know, that that's their whole

00:32:36.620 being is being independent, as you pointed out, and really bending over backwards, not to show

00:32:41.680 any indication one way or another so due to the that due to the vitriolic response due to the

00:32:47.680 fact that the government is campaigning on a side in this makes people a little more skeptical and

00:32:54.340 cynical and that's part of why i appreciate you putting this together though to explain to people

00:32:58.720 too like the government is putting the thumb on the scales with the advertising and things like

00:33:02.600 that but they can't touch the things within the electoral booths it doesn't work that way elections

00:33:07.440 Alberta reports to the legislature to a committee. Premier Smith can't come in and tell people to do

00:33:13.680 certain things or count certain ways. But there's a lot of reasons people are really mistrustful

00:33:19.180 this time around. And it's really unfortunate. And that's why I worry about them really screwing

00:33:23.900 things up and making it worse, because that's what makes lower turnouts all the way down the road.

00:33:27.500 Yeah, Laurie Preston 8618 sent a message in earlier, a chat in earlier saying we also got

00:33:32.280 colorful brochure from the government of alberta educating the public for a strong and sovereign

00:33:37.720 alberta within the united canada that's what she said in the chat here um so yeah i find that one

00:33:44.520 quite interesting because they have a page for each of their nine questions advocating their

00:33:50.040 position on it and then on question 10 they take a neutral stance but still like on the front cover

00:33:55.480 there is the outline of the alberta flag with a big maple leaf on it and at the bottom of every

00:33:59.560 page their slogan is like for with alberta within the united canada so it's a little bit more

00:34:05.260 subliminal or subtle but they're still advocating for an outcome on question 10 clearly yeah yeah

00:34:11.940 i understand why people are skeptical i really do and the lakazic thing you know and until lakazic

00:34:19.640 proves otherwise he's been getting money from the rest of canada he's been getting money from china

00:34:24.380 he's been getting money from the united states he's been getting russia from vladimir putin

00:34:28.820 until he proves differently, because he's not proven where all that money's come from. And I

00:34:32.960 don't know who's getting the money. I don't know if anybody's profiting off this until I'm heard,

00:34:37.480 I hear otherwise. That's the way I feel about this. And it still bugs me. And people said,

00:34:41.500 we should just forget about it. No, we could be talking about millions and millions of dollars

00:34:45.460 that have come in that haven't been announced. And then at the last minute, he starts to announce

00:34:49.420 some of the money he's been bringing in. I do not, I do not, it doesn't, it doesn't,

00:34:55.120 It doesn't surprise me at all that people are skeptical.

00:34:57.840 I'm just going to say it that way once again.

00:35:00.300 Yeah, and I just kind of wanted to throw it out there.

00:35:03.300 APP has been doing a good job calling people.

00:35:06.560 I received this call myself.

00:35:08.640 It was a very nice message.

00:35:09.860 It's the same reminder.

00:35:10.700 There's an election coming up, a referendum.

00:35:12.560 Make sure you get yourself out there.

00:35:14.540 And, John, I also wanted to kind of talk about what you brought up was some of the communication out of Elections Alberta.

00:35:20.900 Eva Chippewick did a good job in calling them out online saying, hey, look, we need some answers from you.

00:35:25.120 And they were very dismissive.

00:35:26.540 They even quoted like Berta Proud Dad and said, just kind of dismissed what he was concerned about.

00:35:33.240 I think that was a big mistake of the social media to take that angle to kind of just go out and just dismiss the concerns.

00:35:41.200 I really wish they would have been a lot more favorable, responded to Eva properly, responded to Lawrence properly and kind of pointed to the information because that is kind of lacking.

00:35:50.200 Their website has some stuff, but it doesn't break it down enough, I think, to build the confidence.

00:35:55.500 So hopefully that's a lesson for Elections Alberta social media to just be a little more forthcoming with the information and a little bit less with the snarky dismissals.

00:36:05.440 And the other thing we want to stress, stress once again, that we asked Elections Alberta to be on with us tonight.

00:36:12.220 We weren't going to be judgmental at all.

00:36:14.580 We just wanted them to explain what was going on.

00:36:16.600 We wanted to get the correct answers.

00:36:18.300 They declined to do that.

00:36:19.600 jason did send them some questions which he forwarded to me and they said they'd get the

00:36:24.660 answers back tomorrow they knew that this was happening tonight we need to stress that and

00:36:29.300 again i mean i think i have the email up here that is the sole purpose of the interview would

00:36:33.820 be to explain clearly and accurately how mail-in ballots are secured verified handled and counted

00:36:38.340 and that's what jason said in the email he sent out to elections alberta a couple of days ago so

00:36:44.360 they declined to be on here tonight so they had a chance and again we were going to be very fair

00:36:48.800 with them. And they declined to do that and answer our questions in time for this

00:36:52.900 live stream tonight. Yeah, for sure. The way I positioned it

00:36:56.820 to them was we just want to address this and there's some genuine concerns out there

00:37:00.240 and we'll just stay focused on the mail-in ballot stuff. But I sent that

00:37:04.680 Friday. I got a response today that they won't be able to come on, but they'll take

00:37:08.780 questions. And then they responded to my questions with, I'll get this to you tomorrow,

00:37:13.180 which is going to be 12 hours too late. But in either case, I'll

00:37:16.820 still post those online so people can see what Elections Alberta said, because we may as well go

00:37:21.320 ahead and do that. But there's a few more questions here I want to bring up, John, before we get into

00:37:25.620 our next subject, because there's a lot of people asking about that too. Yeah, yeah, we're going to

00:37:29.420 get to it. Yeah, for sure. I'm a ballot counter. This is from Earl. Thanks, Earl. I'm a ballot

00:37:34.800 counter. I've been to training. My signs need to come down. I will do as I have been instructed.

00:37:40.240 My neighbors all know how I stand. Let's go. Okay, so John, I heard this as well from somebody who

00:37:45.260 went to the training that they can't keep they can't show a particular position so their lawn

00:37:52.080 signs have to come down um and it's even unclear on whether or not they can show up to uh let's

00:37:58.040 say october 17th in edmonton so um we'll get some more information on that because some questions

00:38:03.240 have been asked of election delbert about that but they're being very clear that you should try

00:38:08.320 at least publicly be non-partisan or show no position if you're going to continue now this is

00:38:13.340 for um specifically for people who are employed by during it i don't know if scrutineers have to go

00:38:19.740 through the same type of issue but i don't mind that because quite frankly you shouldn't be

00:38:24.620 proponent uh if you're going to be working it and then here's um another one from design designated

00:38:31.020 driver oh good or diver yes diver clever um to avoid lineups is exactly why i requested a mail-in

00:38:38.300 ballot i just mailed it back yesterday this is a good reason to do it okay you're going to get your

00:38:42.700 vote in and it will count if you go through that process. You can't request them anymore. The

00:38:46.860 deadline was on Friday, but to those of the 650,000 or so, whichever ones get them, send them in by

00:38:54.400 October 13th, I believe is the deadline for that to get those counted. I got this as well. I just

00:38:59.980 wanted to mention this, dash, dash, dash, NW8QU. I can never figure out these things. I signed the

00:39:07.740 petition, I'm not voting because of retribution by local neighbors. They've used violence to

00:39:14.260 intimidate before, and I'm fearful of the same again. That's terrible that that's happening to

00:39:19.880 you. If you need somebody to take you to a polling station, you let me know. You can get in touch

00:39:24.360 with me, johnboltonab at gmail.com. I'll take you there and I'll protect you. You need to go out and

00:39:29.320 vote. Yeah. And we have another person here, Teresa. I do my scrutineering training on Thursday.

00:39:35.860 So there's another person who watches one of our shows who's going to be a

00:39:39.100 scrutineer in there. That's great. And, uh,

00:39:41.860 another one from Hobbit 24 seven 24 seven.

00:39:45.320 I'll be voting option two, no matter what I stood in line on January in January

00:39:49.720 for in minus 40 weather for two hours to sign the petition. Yeah.

00:39:53.960 There's a lot of people like this, uh, everybody that's going to make sure they

00:39:57.340 get there. Um, but I would say if you can do the advanced voting,

00:40:01.260 do it because, um, it will definitely be done at that stage.

00:40:04.640 So if anything comes up on the 19th for you, family, vehicle, transportation, work, at least your votes already been counted.

00:40:12.760 Tanya, what's next for Let's Talk Alberta?

00:40:15.940 Because we're about to get into the next topic because you guys are making some news out of Calgary.

00:40:21.580 How about we go ahead and jump into that?

00:40:23.800 John, should we play the video first or maybe just hear from Tanya first?

00:40:27.340 There have been people, we wanted to touch base with all of you.

00:40:30.680 You've all got signs, okay?

00:40:32.240 And this is something that popped up today and people are asking about this in the chat.

00:40:37.220 So we got this video for you.

00:40:38.820 We'll show it to them and then maybe you can tell us what you're planning on doing, because I think it was one of your signs that went down, I think, in the city of Calgary.

00:40:46.940 You want to show that, Jason?

00:40:48.740 Yeah, sure.

00:40:58.480 This is a city worker doing this.

00:41:01.040 It appears to be.

00:41:02.100 Yeah, that's what we've been told.

00:41:07.680 He goes at city worker pace, I'll tell you that.

00:41:11.500 Yeah.

00:41:14.180 Yeah.

00:41:15.540 That might be the best evidence that we have.

00:41:20.380 But he's not removing a broken sign or a sign that got hit by a car or anything like that.

00:41:25.400 He's removing a completely what appears to be a valid sign and other ones around it.

00:41:32.100 yeah a valid sign in a valid location that is legally allowed to be there so when the sign is

00:41:39.460 removed that's one thing if the sign is destroyed that's another thing taking it another step

00:41:44.300 further but i believe we've been told that uh the signs end up in like a an impound lot basically

00:41:52.620 where they are stored when they are removed but this one looks like it was unjustly removed but

00:41:58.440 fortunately on our team we have a couple really great lawyers that will be able to handle this

00:42:04.680 very well and we were kind of just waiting to see a little bit like what the city of calgary is going

00:42:09.400 to say about it like obviously they should be coming out with a statement or an apology or

00:42:14.920 some comments on this pointing out that this is wrong this should not be happening i'd like to

00:42:19.720 hear from jeremy farkas who is the mayor of calgary who's been pushing to allow council to

00:42:27.240 make comments and take a side on this issue on October 19th. I think Jeremy Farkas should come

00:42:33.580 out and make a statement that this is wrong. It should not be happening. I was talking with

00:42:38.840 Mrs. Albertan today. All of you know them. They've been coming into my neighborhood for the last

00:42:44.700 couple of weeks. One of your signs, Tanya, huge one on 52nd Street right here in Mackenzie Town

00:42:51.360 keeps getting Trump written all over it in red paint a couple of times a week. We need to have

00:42:57.220 This needs to stop. And I've seen your signs, Corey. I saw one of your signs out on 2A north of Okotoks. Jason, I sent you a picture of one of your signs. They damaged three or four of them. They're beautiful ones on the west side of 2A, just north of Okotoks. And thanks to the people that are replacing the signs, I talked to Jason the day after his was vandalized and they'd replaced them all. I mean, unbelievable. But this has got to stop. And this one has really got people upset.

00:43:22.540 And I know, Tanya, that Keith had sent out a letter to many cities across this province just prior to putting signs on the sides of roads saying, we can do this.

00:43:33.820 This is legal.

00:43:35.260 Do not touch our signs.

00:43:37.100 I've got the letter.

00:43:38.400 Somebody sent it to me today.

00:43:40.240 Keith sent me the letter a couple of months ago, I think it was.

00:43:43.020 This is totally legal, but it's wrong.

00:43:45.280 And I wonder if this was a rogue city employee that was doing this.

00:43:49.100 because if they got word from somebody higher up, we need to know who that person is. And

00:43:53.740 I'm not sure what the crime is here. It probably is a crime for doing this. And they should be,

00:44:00.800 well, they should face the law on this one because this is wrong. It should not be done.

00:44:05.440 Yeah. And Keith is definitely going to be dealing with that. And I think it's just,

00:44:08.740 it's really terrible and disheartening. Like not only do we have different levels of government

00:44:13.900 campaigning against its own people when they should stay neutral and they haven't been

00:44:18.420 delivered a mandate but here again we have someone that is paid for with municipal tax dollars

00:44:23.660 removing signs from one side of the equation like it's such a misuse of our tax dollars people should

00:44:30.700 be irate i am well people are irate and i'll share some of that uh city of calgary from angela

00:44:37.780 williams here uh removing letter to the side signs for sure uh black phantom here five six six eight

00:44:45.260 What's up? All caps here, by the way. What's up with the city of Calgary moving pro-independence

00:44:49.900 science today or yesterday? Did you see that on social media? We sure did, Phantom. And there's

00:44:54.920 a lot more here, but they are pretty upset. Now, Tanya, there was something that was really

00:44:59.320 interesting that you said there. You have a few lawyers on your team. Here's something that I

00:45:03.840 want to share as well. Don't you all have an elected provincial attorney who can investigate

00:45:09.580 the shenanigans at elections alberta now one thing that that i know that keith has talked about is on

00:45:16.140 election day you guys are going to be standing by with lawyers so if anything's going on during uh

00:45:22.380 election day if they're seeing something wrong or or you need some help there's going to be a team

00:45:27.980 of lawyers that can be contacted is that still a thing yeah for sure that's still a thing well keith

00:45:33.260 is one of those lawyers too that will be there obviously present and then like i said before

00:45:37.020 we'll have the whistleblower function on our website so there's an easy place to go and

00:45:41.700 specifically tell us drop pictures whatever information needs to be shared so that we can

00:45:46.780 get that really quickly to our team there too yeah one of the reasons why i did the mail-in ballot

00:45:51.540 was to free myself up for the election day so if somebody needs a ride or something's happening or

00:45:56.700 i need to jump on a stream i've already voted so i don't have to worry about losing my vote

00:46:00.680 and possibly anybody who else is going to be able to assist other people this could be a good reason

00:46:05.480 why you do the advanced voting to make sure that you're freed up that day.

00:46:09.220 Mr. Albertan got in touch.

00:46:10.780 He said, is that the main impound lot today?

00:46:13.080 Our signs aren't there.

00:46:14.180 They have collected at least four signs at this point.

00:46:16.960 That's what he said.

00:46:18.420 Yeah, and I heard that they're leaving the no to the nine up that are nearby.

00:46:22.860 So if that can be proven, this could actually extend into election interference,

00:46:27.020 a type of election interference.

00:46:28.820 So if it definitely is a valid placement, and I know Keith took a lot of work

00:46:32.520 into, you know, contacting the cities and saying, here's the election rules, here are the signage

00:46:38.000 rules, here's where we're allowed to go and not allowed to go. So I'm pretty sure that if they

00:46:42.600 left a no to the nine up but took down, let's Alberta decide. That's going to turn into an 1.00

00:46:47.180 issue. Now, Corey, have you ever seen that during an election? A city, potential city worker, let's

00:46:53.420 just call it that because it could have just been a guy with a vest and a truck, but a potential

00:46:57.700 city worker who was who's taking down signs have you seen that before i i've seen it when signs

00:47:02.980 are at least allegedly misplaced uh it should be looked at i mean the city allows public space signs

00:47:09.860 but they do have a whole pile of other rules it has to be a certain distance from a curb it can't

00:47:14.100 use uh metal for some of the stuff to fasten it to the ground sometimes it might be too close to

00:47:18.420 an intersection there's certain roads that aren't allowed to have signs and certain ones that are

00:47:23.380 i'm not saying that's the case at all with any of these if that's the case i think it's incumbent

00:47:27.780 on the city to say pretty quickly hey this is why we did it you know we even if they're being petty

00:47:33.060 about it and saying you know we measured it and it was two inches too close to the curb or something

00:47:38.100 typically i found municipalities will call the campaign and they'll say hey we've got a problem

00:47:44.500 with this we'd like you to rectify it or we're gonna have to use our crews to pick it up and

00:47:49.140 you'll have to get it back at your own expense, or it might even be disposed of.

00:47:53.140 They don't typically will just go out and remove signs.

00:47:56.040 They'll start with a phone call first.

00:47:57.700 It's not like any of us are hard to find or reach.

00:47:59.680 I mean, the name's right on the sign.

00:48:02.440 That's correct.

00:48:04.000 Go ahead.

00:48:04.500 Sorry, John.

00:48:05.160 At the federal election, that's exactly what happened to me in Spruce Grove.

00:48:08.680 I had some of my large signs.

00:48:10.540 They were too close to the intersection.

00:48:12.100 That was a traffic-controlled signal intersection.

00:48:15.020 There's a specific rule for that.

00:48:16.340 and they called me and they told me the three places they wanted me to move it and where I

00:48:20.920 can move it to. So they didn't just go take it. They did contact me, Corey, during the federal

00:48:25.380 election. And I'm surprised they wouldn't do that on this one. All the third-party advertisers have

00:48:30.560 a phone number or email listed for contacts. There's no reason. Go ahead, John.

00:48:35.260 Yeah, these are the rules. Among other things, our guidelines provide that signs should not be

00:48:39.360 placed within approximately 15 meters of an intersection, not be placed within approximately

00:48:44.200 10 meters of a crosswalk, be positioned at least two meters behind the curb or roadway edge where

00:48:49.700 reasonably practicable, not be placed on mediums or traffic islands, maintain appropriate spacing

00:48:55.980 between substantially similar campaign signs, not obscure motorist cyclists or pedestrian sight

00:49:01.480 lines, not interfere with sidewalks, pathways, transit facilities, traffic control devices,

00:49:06.760 utilities or municipal operations and be securely installed and maintained and those are based on

00:49:11.940 existing municipal and provincial safety practices and that's from the letter that keith sent out

00:49:16.660 back a couple of months ago well that would have been on july 27th from his law office so those are

00:49:21.540 the actual rules so um and then again you did state that you know maybe it was uh cory said it was

00:49:26.980 maybe uh wasn't fulfilling any of those rules but apparently some other signs were pretty close by

00:49:32.740 and they didn't take those ones down either so um maybe there's some bias going on here

00:49:36.660 yeah and we have another comment here i want to bring up uh more confirmation i attended the

00:49:43.880 training as a counter and they told me the same thing you have to remove all signs and cannot

00:49:48.100 participate in any events uh on day of count must wear neutral colors and be sent home so that may

00:49:54.120 be confirmation from coco coco van um that you can't even go to the october 17th rally if you're

00:50:01.440 scrutineer. So double check that. Don't get yourself kicked out. We prefer you to be a

00:50:05.980 scrutineer. Let me correct on that. That's talking about Elections Alberta employees. That's a much

00:50:10.600 different thing. Not wearing your colors and things into the balloting and polling area has

00:50:15.820 been a long minute of rule because you're not supposed to campaign inside there. And if you're

00:50:19.540 an employee of Elections Alberta or Elections Canada, then you shouldn't have that happening

00:50:23.820 on your lawn and you should be appearing impartial. But if you're a scrutineer, and I know some people

00:50:28.540 have really been kind of confusing the two. If you're a scrutineer, actually, you are expressly

00:50:32.700 on one side or another, that's perfectly fine for you to be campaigning on your own time,

00:50:37.300 on your own household, or going to a rally or things like that. But at the polling place,

00:50:42.620 you absolutely must not be doing any campaigning. You can't be wearing a hat, you know, saying which

00:50:47.260 side you're on or a TPA shirt or anything like that. So I just wanted to clarify, there is a

00:50:51.620 difference with the Elections Alberta workers requirements and the scrutiny requirements.

00:50:55.320 no just also to be clear too that particular comment said scrutineer training so let's try

00:51:01.820 and find some more information on that sure uh because maybe they're mixing it up even in the

00:51:06.020 training side of things so uh that could be yeah there's a lot of people going through training

00:51:12.320 you think of the basis of a scrutineer and it asks you that in the scrutineer form when you apply

00:51:16.680 which side are you a proponent of i mean it's assuming you as a scrutineer are on a side which

00:51:22.480 is quite different than an elections alberta employee where you're supposed to make it as

00:51:26.740 impossible as possible for people to realize what side you may or may not be on yeah so we're going

00:51:31.620 to ask people to go ahead and verify with the contact that they have that provided the training

00:51:36.420 or contacted them to double check with that because i'd hate to see anybody uh be removed

00:51:42.400 from any of these roles because they just simply showed up at a rally um we have a kj here that

00:51:48.760 says that truck actually has a calgary decal on it so very likely that was calgary city then

00:51:53.280 and then we have uh hey guys i think anyone that is available to work the election should

00:51:58.880 the more eyes in the room the better i agree with this completely and you will do an advanced voting

00:52:04.100 too because you're going to be working the whole day so you'll be part of the advanced voting to

00:52:07.840 get your vote in and then work the entire day i highly encourage you yes they think quite well

00:52:13.060 out here yeah yeah it's gonna be a long day though from what i understand they told to be

00:52:16.920 there at 8 a.m and then at 8 p.m they start counting and they weren't given a finish time

00:52:22.120 it's the finish time is when they're done so it could be a long day you make some good money

00:52:26.360 john you're gonna say something well i'm just wondering uh so and we're getting uh into an

00:52:31.960 hour here so i'm just uh wondering what all you have coming up uh tanya mentioned the uh big

00:52:37.480 event coming up on the 17th of october i actually uh uploaded there for people who want a bus we've

00:52:42.520 We've got buses going up there as well.

00:52:44.280 There's the event coming up on the 17th of the legislature.

00:52:47.480 I hope to see you there.

00:52:48.680 I'll be emceeing this event.

00:52:50.900 That's going to be the biggest rally in the history of this province, I'm sure.

00:52:54.680 And then there are buses going there as well.

00:52:56.340 If you want to grab a bus, you can book your seat.

00:52:59.360 Go over to letalbertadecide.com.

00:53:02.240 I know all of you are putting out signs.

00:53:05.060 This is going to continue right up to almost voting day.

00:53:08.620 How are things going right now for you?

00:53:10.060 And can you use some more money?

00:53:11.240 i think that's a dumb question well to be honest with you i think we're good on money at this stage

00:53:18.440 uh there's a few more donations that trickle in every day um and we have some more signs that 0.86

00:53:23.080 we're trying to get out so if anybody's in edmonton calgary and they want to participate

00:53:27.000 in more signs we'd be happy to supply those um tanya how are you guys doing with your signs and

00:53:31.960 your funds uh well we have a lot of signs out now and it's pretty cool that we are over seven and a

00:53:37.720 half million views on our big four by eight signs now and i think that you guys have probably even

00:53:41.880 more signs than we have out there or equally as much so i can't imagine how many views between

00:53:47.960 all the tpas our signs are getting which is pretty incredible as far as funding we're getting close

00:53:53.800 to the max but we i would not still turn down funding because we have a bunch of radio ads

00:53:59.560 that are going to be targeted in the next couple weeks and then we're continuing with our digital

00:54:04.920 campaigns and marketing that way. And so we'll put the funds to good use and continue pushing

00:54:10.460 for this as well. Corey? Yeah, I have a fair amount of signs and banners now in stock. I've

00:54:18.440 been mailing banners just to get to those outlying spots. So if you're in a spot that, you know,

00:54:22.280 you've got high visibility, we just can't get volunteers out to you. You know what? I can put

00:54:26.620 one of those banners in the post and get it up to you. Fundraising has been going good. You know,

00:54:31.020 slow down from the start i'm not buying any more physical signs or banners for the duration of the

00:54:35.900 campaign we've got quite a stock so i still don't be afraid to ask and i'll try and get them to you

00:54:40.540 but we could still use more funds because similar to tanya i'm putting a bunch everything else that's

00:54:45.020 in excess is going into digital billboards possibly some radio ads things that i can buy

00:54:50.060 and make sure to empty the account out in that final five days you know on on stuff to really

00:54:54.620 get that blast out there that final seven days so uh you know i don't want people to stop donating

00:54:59.900 though i understand so many people have been so generous already but if they want to continue

00:55:04.220 uh there will be good expenditures to keep getting the word out yeah we're the same way we won't be

00:55:09.260 ordering more signs we have a bit to get rid of and we'll be focusing on digital and other media

00:55:14.620 uh right before the election last two weeks or so um and that's and yeah we have to spend it all

00:55:19.340 guys it all has to go out or else it has to go to charity or elections alberta so be assured we're

00:55:25.660 We're going to spend every dime that we received.

00:55:27.640 And I also want to take a moment to thank John because that telethon you did really helped push us over the edge when it came to having the funds to do this last month of campaigning.

00:55:37.720 So thank you for that.

00:55:39.040 Well, thank you.

00:55:39.760 Thanks to everybody that helped out with that one.

00:55:41.280 That was a really fun day.

00:55:42.640 And, you know, we're getting down to the nitty gritty.

00:55:44.780 I just want to remind everybody that the last time that there was a referendum on something like this was a little over 30 years ago, 1995.

00:55:51.700 and if you remember that one the side to leave was ahead until the last week and it got flipped

00:55:59.520 so we need to fight right until the end in this one so don't hold up um just keep fighting it's

00:56:05.600 only another three weeks until the 19th of october and then we get to vote and then we get our next

00:56:11.560 vote which means we get to leave right yeah yeah we got to get there and then tanya there's a

00:56:18.480 comment here for you um let's bring it up for you uh your tractor is sexy it's a combine but yes it

00:56:27.320 is very sexy yeah how are you doing with that are you like gps or how are you doing yeah like

00:56:38.340 we're on gps and i just have this joystick here that my hand is operating i don't know if i can

00:56:43.980 show you that here this kind of operates like oh my god the whole thing right from there wow

00:56:50.240 yeah and then i've been asked you'll see that when you come out john yeah yeah i'm going to be

00:56:56.380 i'm going i'm going out to tanya's on thursday i'm going to do an interview with her about the

00:57:01.780 campaign from the combine so i'm going out there to to see what she's like out in the blacky area

00:57:06.540 and i'm going to get to see this amazing vehicle she's in so i'm looking forward to doing that

00:57:10.120 i'll see you on thursday morning tanya that sounds awesome yeah that's gonna be a good one

00:57:15.500 and i've been asked here jason can't find your show anymore carol don't worry we haven't gone

00:57:20.140 too far we just really focused on the referendum campaign right now and getting ready for winter

00:57:24.800 it's all coming at a bad time i'm not doing a harvest but i do have to get my property ready

00:57:29.320 for winter so we'll do our best to get back to you carol on that one uh so john as we wrap up

00:57:34.000 the last few minutes here was there any other topics you wanted to address well no i think

00:57:39.940 I think we've got to everything uh it's been a long haul and the summer went by quickly I was

00:57:44.740 just amazed how fast we got to this point it's already going into October the temperature's

00:57:49.100 starting to drop uh and I'm excited about what's coming up in the next few weeks I just want to say

00:57:54.360 uh thanks to Corey I I watch Corey's independence talks all the time you're doing great work Corey

00:57:58.860 thank you so much you know you're sort of I kind of think of you as the patriarch of the movement

00:58:04.020 in a way you know because you did this many years ago a couple of decades back and you know you

00:58:09.200 write about it in your book. You kind of failed at it. You didn't have the plan. And we'll have

00:58:14.080 to get you on over the next couple of weeks to talk to you about how you feel things are going

00:58:18.560 right now. We're closer than ever before, but go over and support Corey, go over and support Jason,

00:58:24.440 support their TPA, support Let Alberta Decide, and keep working hard folks. And we can win this

00:58:30.960 thing. I'm feeling good about it. I really am. Some closing comments, Corey? Blue Corey, Smurf

00:58:36.820 yeah i know i'm gonna get my camera fixed so i don't have to look like a smurf on these future

00:58:42.420 but at least it went blue and not red if i think he's gonna have an odd color um yeah just another

00:58:47.700 a note for some people there was a canmore event tanya was supposed to be there as well

00:58:51.780 uh on october 7th it got canceled uh the venue got too much pressure from the woke

00:58:56.820 and they couldn't find another venue anywhere else so just kind of a reminder to everybody

00:59:00.500 this battle goes right to the end unfortunately they're gonna try and shut us up and shut us down

00:59:05.460 and we won't let them they're uh they're not going to stop us they're just going to annoy

00:59:10.020 us and inspire us to do more tanya closing comments uh yeah i just would encourage um

00:59:16.420 everybody with the get out to vote campaign that will be starting now that's really going to be

00:59:21.300 getting active because that's the next phase of this whole thing is making sure everyone gets to

00:59:25.220 the polls and votes so on our website we have uh the path to victory and you it's a very simple

00:59:34.660 premise basically you're just looking to identify 10 people in your life that you can take claim to

00:59:41.300 to get out to the polls to make sure that they go and vote the the design of it it's like an app

00:59:45.860 based uh web-based app it's very simple you just log in their first name their phone number and

00:59:51.860 then it will take you through the rest and basically what it does is it sends out an invite

00:59:55.860 to the people that you've put in as your top 10 and it comes from your phone it's just their first

01:00:02.580 name and then it prompts them to either accept this invitation to make sure that they get

01:00:07.460 notifications of the voting dates and all the information that we can send them around voting

01:00:11.540 or they can opt out of it right then so none other information gets shared to us unless they allow

01:00:16.580 it and then the other aspect of that is that if you know three people and can identify three people

01:00:21.780 that are keen so i could pick you three gentlemen i know that you guys are keen on independence

01:00:26.340 and i'm going to put you as my three volunteers now you guys go get your 10 people and that way

01:00:30.980 way we can kind of exponentially increase it and make sure that we're getting a lot of people out

01:00:34.460 to vote 100 and i like these initiatives on the get out the vote that is our next step on this

01:00:40.460 campaign so tanya thank you to your team for putting that together and getting it out there

01:00:45.480 a couple last comments here uh rage against machine uh god bless you all great job people

01:00:51.980 thank you all very much for that uh we have thank you everyone great information that's what we were

01:00:57.820 hoping to do for you uh thank you to everyone uh with two dollars super chat here for you john it

01:01:02.980 looks like i wish i had money to donate i feel horrible don't bradley you're doing a fantastic

01:01:07.040 job you're doing everything that we would expect you're getting yourself informed getting yourself

01:01:12.120 ready and you'll be there that's most important so thank you bradley and then fear no evil says

01:01:17.020 option two option two option two i hope that's not three votes you're planning to do because

01:01:20.800 only one will count but thank you very much to fear no evil we really appreciate that

01:01:26.240 So on that note, John, I think we're good.

01:01:28.680 We'll go ahead and sign off and get Tanya back to dumping that load she's got.

01:01:33.160 She's probably getting pretty full.

01:01:36.260 So thanks everybody for hanging out on this one.

01:01:38.460 I will post the answers from Elections Alberta if they get back to me tomorrow, as promised.

01:01:43.040 Stay tuned.

01:01:44.180 And there was one more comment here I didn't throw in there, John and Corey, that asked maybe we should do this once a week until the referendum.

01:01:50.080 So maybe we'll chat about that because I think it is a good idea to keep people informed.

01:01:54.060 and as we get more information to provide

01:01:56.360 it as well. So, John, thanks

01:01:58.320 for putting it together. I really appreciate you.

01:02:00.680 Corey, you're awesome, even though you're

01:02:02.340 blue. And Tanya, be safe out there.

01:02:04.840 We love you. Thank you so much.

01:02:06.180 Good night, everyone. Good night, everybody.

01:02:08.260 You all take care, and God bless.

John Bolton - September 30, 2026

Alberta's mail-in ballots... should you be worried？

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