Danielle Smith clearly loves America. In addition to her numerous diplomatic visits and personal holidays there, she has also used the country as a model for her own political brand, one that focuses far more on things like individual freedom and liberty than more traditionally Canadian values like community and shared interests. She has deliberately imported their most noxious culture wars, from the right-wing obsession over transgender rights to book bans and DEI policies. 

And she seems determined to import their worst political inclination of all: election denialism. 

Her government’s 2024 decision to ban the use of electronic vote tabulators was an obvious sop to the Trumpy fringe elements that dominate the United Conservative Party, and was passed in advance of a leadership vote later that year. The emphasis on hand-counting ballots was part of a “bill of rights” approved by the UCP board in 2024, one that included “the Freedom to Keep and Bear Arms,” in case its American provenance wasn’t already obvious. 

It wasn’t intended to address any actual concerns with the electoral system, either from elections officials or local governments. Indeed, during an April 2024 interview with the CBC’s Edmonton AM, then-municipal affairs minister Ric McIver said the quiet part out loud. “This isn’t about evidence. This is about the confidence of people.”

The ban on electronic tabulators made last year’s municipal elections more expensive and less efficient, and resulted in delays in the reporting of results. But that was just an amuse bouche compared to the feast that the UCP........

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