EDMONTON — It appears many Alberta voters wanted to send a message of their own in the province's recent election for so-called senators-in-waiting.

More than one in five chose to reject or decline their ballots in the Nov. 22 election, according to results released Thursday by Alberta's chief electoral officer. The results showed 714,709 cast valid ballots but that 85,937 voters declined to vote outright while 84,643 ballots were rejected for a variety of reasons, including people writing protest messages.

In Edmonton and Calgary, only about one-third of eligible voters marked their ballots.

Ed Stelmach, Alberta's minister responsible for Senate reform, said he was undaunted by the numbers.

"It is a worthwhile cause," said Stelmach, Alberta's intergovernmental affairs minister.

"We are going to continue to push for Senate reform and one way is to hold these elections."

Premier Ralph Klein ordered up the $2.9-million Senate election, held in conjunction with the provincial general vote, in the hope that Prime Minister Paul Martin would pick from among the top four vote-getters to fill three empty Alberta seats in the upper chamber.

Martin, however, has said he has no intention of appointing any of the four successful candidates because he does not believe in "piecemeal" Senate reform.

Three of the four winners -- Bert Brown, Betty Unger, and Cliff Breitkreuz -- were backed by Klein's Progressive Conservative Party.

The fourth, Independent candidate Link Byfield, said the high number of declined and rejected ballots shows the province did little to promote the election.

"The blame for that has to be laid with the Klein government," said Byfield.

"I think we should either, as a province through our government, promote the idea much more vigorously than the government has for the last 10 years, or stop doing it."

Klein was criticized for launching the vote but then not appearing to back it. He agreed to allow candidates to run under the Tory banner only after being pressed by his caucus.

Bert Brown, who was returned as a Senate nominee for the second time, said people shouldn't jump to conclusions about the declined and rejected ballots.

He said recent polls suggest a majority of Canadians support overhauling the upper chamber.

Alberta's opposition party leaders said the results reveal many Albertans are lukewarm to senators-in-waiting.

"Albertans knew this was a dead-end exercise and just didn't want to buy into it," said Kevin Taft of the Liberals.

NDP Leader Brian Mason labelled the exercise a farce.

"These Senate elections are meaningless," he said. "They are outside the Constitution of the country and the prime minister is not going to respect them."

Political analyst Peter McCormick said many Albertans ignored the Senate election because there was virtually no campaign to draw voter attention to it.

"This was an orphan campaign," said McCormick, a political science professor at the University of Lethbridge. "If you weren't paying attention, then you had no idea that a Senate nominee election was happening."

The campaign received scant media coverage and there were no public debates.

Senate reform has been a western demand for years, brought on by the belief the current system shortchanges the region.

The four western provinces, with 30 per cent of the country's population, have just 24 of 105 seats in the Senate.

The imbalance is acute in British Columbia and Alberta, where the two provinces have about 23 per cent of the population but only 12 seats in the upper house.

So far, no other province has held a senatorial election, but Nova Scotia Premier John Hamm has said he's prepared to follow Alberta's lead.