Calgary opens up drive thru voting booth for its municipal election

Flag of Calgary (Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

CALGARY — That’ll be one mayor and two aldermen, but sorry, no fries with that.

Less than two weeks before Calgary’s municipal election, the city has opened up a drive-thru voting booth at the McMahon Stadium.

The station will accommodate advanced voting, and drivers won’t even have to get out of their car to cast their ballots.

City officials say the option makes it easy and convenient for Calgarians to cast their ballots in the municipal election.

It works like this: drivers pull up, and are directed to one of four polling lanes.

Then a city election worker checks their identification, confirms eligibility, determines which ward the driver will be voting in, and hands the driver a portable voting pouch containing all the ballots for mayor, councillor and school board.

The election worker can either take the filled out ballot to the ballot box or the driver can get out and deliver it themselves.

Officials say they hope the new station will improve voter turnout.

“The main objective here is the convenience factor to make sure we are where people are, or where they happen to be at any given moment so they can take a couple of minutes of their time and vote,” said Paul Denys with the City of Calgary.

Election Day is Oct. 16.