Does Elections-BC Want To Turn Reasonable People Into Crazed Conspiracy Theorists?

ByeByeGoneBad

PointGreyVille

So....

There has been all sorts of chatter on the Lotuslandian interwebz about things like...

- Extra ballot boxes that suddenly appeared out of nowhere...

- Advance polls that may not have been counted already....

- Absentee ballots that don't have a note from their mother....

- A thousand ghost votes that may or may not exist and/or be named Casper...

All of which would be nothing more than grist for the mill if everything was running smoothly over there at good old Elections-British Columbia.

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I got to wondering how the votes went down in last week's Point Grey by-election when it became clear that Christy Clark and David Eby were running neck-and-neck and cheek-by-jowl from start to (almost) finish when the big surge for Ms. Clark came in. This is clearly evident from the whiteboard image above which was snapped by the VSun's Andrea Woo direct from Camp Eby (note the absolute tie after 128 ballot boxes at 5421 votes and then note the next line).

My best guess at the time was that the big surge on the bottom line of the board came from extremely heavy ProPol-assisted advance votes and/or a couple of choice geographic polls from the poshest portions of Creme-Ville.

Anyway.....

As I mentioned earlier today, it was most interesting to learn from A. Tsakumis the next day that it appears that at least one small pocket of creamiest Creme-Ville west of Blanca (ie. the pointiest part of Point Grey) actually went to Eby.

Given that, I decided to go looking for the poll-by-poll splits over at Elections-British Columbia myself.

But, unfortunately they were not there.

So, I instead went over to Chad Skelton's VSun Blog because he has demonstrated in the past that he is the best local proMedia number-cruncher going.

Well.....

It turns out that Mr. Skelton has been frustrated by E-BC also:

B.C. Premier Christy Clark's surprisingly narrow victory over NDP candidate David Eby in the Vancouver-Point Grey byelection has many wondering how a race many thought would be a cakewalk turned into a squeaker.

With that in mind, we were interested in taking a look at the poll-by-poll results from last night's race to see whether any parts of the riding switched from Liberal to NDP since the 2009 general election.

So I called up Jan Pierce, the Elections BC returning officer for the byelection, and asked her for a copy.

She said they had the poll-by-poll results in hand but would have to check with Elections BC head office to see if she could release them. A few minutes later she called back with her answer: No she couldn't give them to me.....

And here's the real kicker....E-BC is now saying that the splits won't be available until September:

....According to Elections BC policy, she (returning officer Jan Pierce) said, poll-by-poll results are only available once the official results are published by Elections BC.

And when would that be, I asked? Could be as late as September, she said.

In an e-mail, Elections BC spokesman Don Main confirmed the agency won't be releasing poll-by-poll results anytime soon:

Voting area by voting area results are considered official results. Official results will available in the Report of the Chief Electoral Officer on the Vancouver-Point Grey By-election, not before. ... The report is scheduled for mid-September....

Heckfire!

Won't that be after the HST referendum and, perhaps, well into the next provincial General Election campaign that will be fronted by Christy Clark herself?

Now, given all that, I am doing my best to try and stay reasonable here.

Honest.

I really, really am.

How about you?

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Which begs the question....How does Mr. T. have the numbers...My best bet is that it is coming through one of the Liberal party's proPols who got them from their scrutineers....Regardless, the proPols clearly have the numbers...Thus, even in the complete absence of any conspiracy whatsoever, this rank incompetence (four months to ratify one lousy little by-election??!!) does not serve the public, not to mention their trust, well...I mean, at the very least should the proPols get to have information that we paid for?

Meanwhile, Ms. Clark and her Party are caught red-handed electioneering and E-BC says that is all just fine and dandy.....Laila and cherylb have that story (and they had it before Andrew MacLeod over at The Tyee)...

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