City councillor and BC NDP candidate Tim Stevenson petitioned the BC Supreme Court Jun 22 to have the results of May’s provincial election in Vancouver-Burrard overturned and a new election called.
After the final judicial recount in the riding, Liberal incumbent Lorne Mayencourt, eked out an 11-vote win and was sworn in as the riding’s MLA. But Stevenson wants the results overturned because errors made by Elections BC invalidated 71 ballots across the riding. Those invalidated votes may have changed the outcome of the election.
Stevenson says if the law allowed the disqualified ballots to be counted, they would be.
“How would you like to be one of those people,” says Stevenson, “that found out that you had placed a ballot and then found out that, because of some error by Elections BC, it had not been counted?”
Stevenson’s petition points out that 18 absentee votes cast at the West End Community Centre were also improperly certified, but those ballots were mixed into a general ballot box and were in fact counted.
Derrill Thompson, Stevenson’s lawyer, says the time it takes to resolve the issue will depend on the cooperation of counsel for Mayencourt and Elections BC.
“We’re ready to go within a week,” says Thompson. “I suspect it may take a couple of weeks longer than that, but the ball really is in other counsel’s court in that regard.”
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