LILLEY: Elections Canada sullies its own reputation with recounts

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Elections Canada is doing a really good job of sullying its own reputation. The bizarre nature of recounts happening in this last election is making them look like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.

We have ridings won by hundreds of votes by one side flipping to the other, leads reduced to a handful of votes and one riding won by a single vote, but some ballots weren’t counted.

At a time where parts of the public are convinced that every election is stolen — that the establishment or deep state are out to protect the preferred party — this doesn’t help. To be clear, there is no evidence of the election being stolen, of officials putting their thumbs on the scale or anything inappropriate happening.

That said, incompetence will lead to questions about what really happened.

Take, for example, Milton East—Halton Hills South where Liberal candiate Kristina Tesser Derksen defeated Conservative candidate Parm Gill by 21 votes. On election night, Gill had been declared the winner by 298 votes but in the validation of the vote, that turned into a 29 vote loss for Gill.

After a judicial recount, Tesser Derksen turned a 298 vote loss into a 21 vote win.

It’s standard practice for Elections Canada to tally the votes again the day after counting is done. Still, how does a 298 vote win for Gill turn into a 29 and then 21 vote loss for the Conservatives?

This one has people questioning the statistical probability of such an outcome. Thankfully, due to the judicial recount process where all parties are present and they can challenge ballots and decisions, there is no need to doubt the outcome. While strange, it is legitimate.

In Windsor Tecumseh Lakeshore, Conservative Kathy Borrelli won the riding by 233 votes on election night over Liberal Irek Kusmierczyk. After the validation of vote, Borelli’s lead dropped to 77 votes and after a judicial recount, she eventually won by just four votes.

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Meanwhile, in the Newfoundland riding of Terra Nova–The Peninsulas, Liberal Anthony Germain won the riding by just 12 votes but in the end, Conservative Jonathan Rowe won, by just 12 votes after a recount.

The weirdest riding though was Terrebonne in the Montreal area. It went to the Liberals by 35 votes on election night, then flipped to the Bloc after the validation process and then went back to the Liberals by one vote after a judicial recount.

That’s when the mess really started.

Voters came forward to say that their special ballots that they mailed in on time didn’t make it because Elections Canada printed the wrong postal code on the return envelope and the ballots were returned to sender. Based on all of that, the Bloc Quebecois has taken the result to court asking for the election to declared null and void and a byelection to be held.

While experts debate the validity of the Bloc’s claim — and there have been law experts claiming they have a valid case and others saying it should be thrown out — the reality is the mistakes by Elections Canada do cast a shadow of a doubt over the current result. A byelection should clearly be held so that no MP is sitting in the House of Commons with an asterisk next to their name.

All of these examples combined do make you wonder, how many other ridings were closer than we know simply because we didn’t bother double checking the work?

It isn’t normal to see the work of Elections Canada called into question, but between these messy recounts, their website not working on election night and a general distrust of institutions that is spreading, it’s natural and understandable that this is happening.

Next time around, Elections Canada needs to run a tighter ship.