The vote to determine who will represent Wildrose in the Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre riding will take place on Friday and Saturday.
Wildrose Party Leader Danielle Smith confirmed the vote dates in a stopover at Red Deer’s Michener Centre on Friday. Further details on polling locations and times weren’t available.
The nomination battle has proven controversial with sitting MLA Joe Anglin complaining that he was blindsided by his own constituency association president, Jason Nixon.
Anglin contends Nixon broke party rules by not stepping down ahead of announcing his nomination intentions, but the party ruled in Nixon’s favour.
Smith addressed the controversy again on Friday, saying the party’s process had been followed.
“We have an appeals process in our party,” she told reporters. “It went through two levels of appeal and they found that there was no reason to disqualify (Nixon).
“So we are going to have a contested race there and it will be up to our members to decide,” she said.
“We strongly favour democratic nomination races. Many of our (MLAs) were fortunate that nobody chose to take out papers and challenge them.
“Joe faces a challenge in his riding and it will ultimately be up to members to decide whether they want to affirm his candidacy, so I guess we’ll wait and see how that rolls out next week.”