Mayor-elect Don Iveson prepared to 'hit the ground running'

Don Iveson speaks to a crowd after being voted in as mayor of Edmonton, Monday, Oct. 21, 2013.

The campaigning may be over, but candidates and thousands of voters in Edmonton, and communities across Alberta were waiting to hear who had finally been chosen to lead their civic governments for the next few years.

The polls closed in Edmonton at 8 p.m. – just over an hour later, CTV’s Election 2013 results desk declared Don Iveson elected as Edmonton’s mayor-elect.

The declaration came just after 9 p.m. – over the next half hour, a number of other members of Edmonton’s City Council were declared elected: incumbents Dave Loken (Ward 3), Tony Caterina (Ward 7), Ben Henderson (Ward 8), and Amarjeet Sohi (Ward 12) were declared elected.

Finally, before 11 p.m. a number of new faces had been declared elected to Edmonton's City Council: Andrew Knack (Ward 1), Bev Esslinger (Ward 2), Michael Oshry (Ward 5), Scott McKeen (Ward 6), Michael Walters (Ward 10), and Mike Nickel (Ward 11).

As for voter turnout, over the course of the day, city officials said earlier in the day, they had counted a higher number of voters than in the 2010 civic election.

On Election Day in 2010, the city’s statistics show 199,359 citizens, or 33.4 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot.

Before the polls opened Monday though, the numbers were already higher than for the previous election.

The city said 23,076 advance votes were cast in the weeks leading up to Monday – just over 3,000 votes more than the 20,069 advance votes cast in the previous vote.

Final numbers were not immediately available, but by about 4 p.m. Monday, the numbers for the 2013 election were also higher than 2010 – with 83,477 votes cast, considerably higher than the same time three years before where 77,947 had voted.

In all, the Returning Officer with the City of Edmonton said she has high hopes for the number of Edmontonians who headed to the polls.

“Hopefully today we’re still over 200,000, would be my best hope,” Alayne Sinclair said. “If the world was really right we’d have about 400,000, but 200,000 I would be happy.”