Voting in the Alberta referendum? Experts say do your homework

So, the Alberta referendum. You might expect the ballot looks something like this. Should Alberta stay in Canada, yes or no? What it actually looks like is this. Should Alberta remain a province of Canada, or should the government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada? Voters must select option one or option two. Most people have never seen a referendum that has that kind of question. The government chose this question after a more direct version from a separatist petition was blocked by the courts. Breaking news in Alberta, where a judge has tossed out a separatist petition arguing the province has a duty to consult with First Nations. That's why we have a question that refers to a second referendum, and that is if Albertans indicate in this referendum that they wish to participate in what the province calls a binding referendum on separation, they can do so later. But this is actually only one of ten questions on the ballot, covering many different topics. And if ten seems like a lot, that's because historically it is. This is completely unprecedented just in terms of the number of questions, and that's partly what's overwhelming people. Plus this linguist says the way the questions are written is confusing. They are definitely quite complicated sentences. And this constitutional law expert says they are unusual. It's jam-packed with important questions, it's typically not the case that a government will ask citizens multiple questions that are discrete and different from each other. So let's get into the content of these questions. Questions 1-5 are about immigration and how the government of Alberta provides services like healthcare and education for non-permanent residents, while questions 6-9 look at constitutional matters. Experts we spoke to say these questions all require research. I think they know what option one on the separation question is. That one is clear. The other questions, I think, are causing a fair bit of confusion. That may lead to some people deciding not to answer some of the questions, yielding a very low sort of response rate on some of the questions. It's asking a lot of a population to think about 10 questions, which require a lot of background knowledge and information to actually answer intelligently. The wording of the questions is complex as well. These are just sentences that are structured that lead to pauses of thought or confusion. So let's take one of the questions. Question four. It says, Do you support the government of Alberta charging a reasonable fee or premium to individuals with non-permanent immigration status living in Alberta for their and their families' use of the healthcare and education systems. The key here is the word for. This linguist says it can be interpreted in different ways. Does that for phrase actually go back and connect to the fee or premium? Or is that for just supposed to have attached to the word immediately prior? In one way of reading it, it's asking if people with non-permanent status should be charged a fee for public services. In the second way of reading it, it sounds like you're being asked specifically about people with non-permanent status who are living in Alberta purely for the use of health care and education. And that ambiguity changes the meaning. There might be the implication, yes, that it's asking a slightly different question. And that's something that happens in a number of the questions all the way down the list. This expert says the wordiness of these questions is part of what makes them confusing. Let's take the example of question seven. Do you support the government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian constitution to abolish the unelected federal senate. The question goes out of its way to mention the unelected senate. And he says that could lead people to wondering if there is more than one senate. But there is only one senate in Canada, and it's always been unelected. So you can just imagine people in that ballot box, it's probably going to be long lines. if you add time pressure, the reaction to just how you're parsing the sentence and whether you notice all these ambiguities changes." Plus, though there are voting guides in almost 30 languages, these questions themselves are not being translated for voters, not even into French. You have to have a fairly, fairly good command of the English language in order to be able to parse these sentences. If you don't have that native speaker ability, it's going to be tough. In the meantime, this political scientist has been leading information sessions about the questions and their consequences at the request of community groups. I've never been in a situation where I've had to do this kind of research in advance for any kind of vote. She says people should try to study the questions in advance. It's very important for people to vote and in this case to make a plan for voting.