Elections Alberta says it has removed someone from their social media channels after a series of head-turning tweets on Monday.
Elections Alberta will be looking into this matter further to ensure our social accounts always reflect our nonpartisan and impartial work.
— Elections Alberta (@ElectionsAB) October 18, 2021
The tweets were in response to University of Alberta professor Andrew Leach talking about the provincial referendum.
Someone using the Elections Alberta account had some partisan and snarky responses.
Leach says he initially noticed the tone of certain tweets from Elections Alberta in another series of responses was off and said they should not be taking such a stance.
“It really seemed like they were being overtly mocking and condescending to people who were asking them what seemed like very legitimate questions,” said Leach.
I'm glad that Elections AB deleted the tweet below and apologized, but their online presence in the lead-up to this vote has been awful and Albertans deserve much better. Our elections office should not have its fingers on the scales of the referendum. pic.twitter.com/UMIcatPNSm
— Andrew Leach, a.k.a. The Pulse Professor (@andrew_leach) October 18, 2021
Leach says while Elections Alberta deleted the main tweet in question, they failed to delete other tweets that had the same tone.
“There are still a lot of tweets there that are pretty aggressive, misinforming voters about aspects of either our electoral system, our constitution, etcetera,” said Leach.
He says that Elections Alberta should not be “putting their fingers on the scales” and that some engagements seemed to go against what was said previously.
“They engaged yesterday when someone called out Jeromy Farkas in Calgary,” he explained. “They said ‘no, no, no it’s all fine, it’s all well within in the rules’ but when other things were raised they said ‘Oh, it’s not our responsibility, we’re not in the business of enforcing the rules for municipal elections’.”
In a new series of tweets on Tuesday afternoon Elections Alberta says it is committed to rebuilding trust and deleted the tweets that do not meet its standards.
