Kenney, Jean or Schweitzer? New Alberta UCP leader announced today

The man who will lead Alberta's United Conservative Party into the next election, and who could become the province's next premier, will be announced later today in Calgary.

About 63,000 UCP members registered by Oct. 13 to vote in the contest between Brian Jean, Doug Schweitzer and Jason Kenney.

Online and telephone voting started at 9 a.m. Thursday and will conclude at 5 p.m. Saturday. The winner is expected to be announced at Calgary's BMO Centre shortly afterwards.

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Members will be asked to rank candidates in terms of preference on the ballot. If no candidate wins 50 per cent of the vote on the first ballot, the last-place candidate will be dropped from contention.

The party will then take the second preferences of the people who voted for the dropped candidate and add them to the total for the remaining two candidates.

The vote concludes a race that started after the Progressive Conservative and Wildrose parties agreed on July 22 to unite as the UCP.

Jean, 54, is the MLA for Fort McMurray-Conklin, and led the former Wildrose Party for two years. He has said he would be the only candidate who in the 2019 provincial election could lead the UCP to winning seats across the province, including Edmonton.

Kenney, 49, has during the campaigntoutedhis experience as a federal Conservative minister and fluency in French. He has said he is the only candidate who could stand up to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government in Ottawa.

Schweitzer, 38, is a fiscal conservative who calls himself the only social moderate in the race. The Calgary lawyer has said he wants the UCP to settle its positions on social issues such as LGBTQ rights and gay-straight alliances so they can't be used as ammunition by the NDP in the next provincial election.

Caucus split

All three men have vowed to repeal the province's carbon tax and the NDP's controversial farm safety law if they assume office in 2019.

The leadership race was divisive at times. Jean claimed Kenney's team spread lies about his political record and religious beliefs.

Kenney blamed Jean for running up a deficit in the caucus that forced the UCP to lay off at least five people.

On Thursday, Schweitzer and Jean asked the party to suspend voting because they were concerned about the security ofpersonal identification numbers issued to members for the vote.

The party found no evidence of voter fraud and the process was allowed to continue as scheduled. .

The UCP caucus has also split in its support between Kenney and Jean. Thirteen MLAs support Kenney, and eleven are behind Jean.

Wayne Drysdale from Grande Prairie-Wapiti is the only UCP MLA backing Schweitzer.

Interim party leader Nathan Cooper has stayed neutral during the race.