The Stay Free Alberta petitioners say they dropped more than 300,000 signatures off at Elections Alberta in support of a secession vote—well over the 177,732 threshold needed to prompt a referendum question. (The Logic)

Talking point: Elections Alberta says it won’t verify the signatures until a court rules on a challenge by Alberta First Nations groups, who argue the petition violates their treaty rights. Once the process begins, the agency may apply extra scrutiny when sorting through signatures because of allegations that the Republican Party of Alberta provided its copy of the voter list to a separatist group. Elections Alberta seeds voter lists with different fake names before providing them to legitimate political parties. The agency says it’ll search the petition for bogus entries from the Republican Party list. If the referendum goes ahead, the vote would be scheduled for October.