Will Alberta, a province in Canada, vote to become the 51st state in the United States on June 30? No, that's not true: Contrary to a website article published in June 2023, there was no vote on June 30, 2023, and no votes have been scheduled for June 30, 2024, according to the official website for the government of Alberta. Lead Stories did not find any credible evidence on Google News, a reliable news index, that Alberta planned on seceding from Canada.
The claim appeared in a post on X, formerly Twitter, (archived here) where it was posted on May 23, 2024. The headline in the screenshot read:
Canadian Conservatives Have Had Enough: Alberta To Vote On Becoming 51st US State
This is what the X post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue May 28 13:53:21 2024 UTC)
The caption to the X post read, "If Alberta joined the Union, what would we rename it?"
Lead Stories found that the screenshot came from a June 10, 2023, article from cowboystatedaily.com (archived here). The piece states that conservatives in Alberta supposedly were disgruntled with about with their government, including "high taxes," "overreach on gun control" and "authoritarian control." The article published in June 2023 claims that a vote on whether Alberta will succeed or not is scheduled for "June 30." The year of this alleged vote is not specified.
Neither the X screenshot nor the Cowboy State Daily article cites a source for the purported vote.
Lead Stories searched the government of Alberta's website and could not find any evidence that it planned to vote on succession or U.S. statehood in 2024.
Lead Stories did a search using keywords on the Google News archive of thousands of reliable information sites, visible here, which found no credible documents or reporting to corroborate the claim that a 2023 vote occurred or a 2024 vote was in the works (archived here) at the time of writing.
Lead Stories contacted the government of Alberta and will update this article when a relevant response is received.
Other Lead Stories articles about Canada are here.
