Overview
- Elections Alberta concluded on Friday that the Water Not Coal petition did not meet the roughly 178,000 verified-signature threshold after a statistical verification estimated 172,088 valid signatures.
- The agency first validated 196,088 signatures then used a sample of 384 signatories to extrapolate a final total with a 95 percent confidence level and a ±5 percent margin of error.
- Elections Alberta said many rejections were due to incomplete or duplicate entries and signatories who could not or would not verify their information by phone.
- Campaign leader Corb Lund called the process opaque and unreasonable, cited a recent voter-data privacy breach as a factor, and said his team is consulting lawyers about a judicial review that must be filed within 30 days.
- Premier Danielle Smith defended steps her government has taken, including buying leases, banning mountaintop removal and open-pit mining for future projects, and she said she will meet Lund to discuss remaining concerns while the legal and political fight continues.