45 Liberal MLA's will take their Oath of Office in the Legislative Chamber, but Lorne Mayencourt won't be one of them, as he's still not the official winner in Vancouver-Burrard, "At the very least I'll be a visitor and I look forward to that because I really enjoy the whole ceremony. It's very important to me." Lorne Mayencourt on CKNW, June 9, 2005
It has been quite a ride, first it was reported Lorne won then they discover Tim Stevenson was ahead. Then Tim again, then after the absentee ballots were counted Lorne had an 18 vote lead. That lead fell to 11 votes after a judicial recount.
It seemed Lorne was about to take it after all. We discovered as mentioned first at Langley Politics, that 71 ballots were not counted in the judicial recount. Today we are learning from Tim Stevenson that the ballots were not included due to mistakes made by polling clerks or returning officers from elsewhere in the province.
So Lorne will not get to take a seat in the Legislative Assembly yet. I expect that by the deadline today, Tim will have filed an appeal of the decision not to count these 71 ballots. They do not know who the ballots are for yet. They just know that there was some kind of error on the envelopes of those ballots.
Unlike Florida, there are no missing or hanging Chads to find. We have the 71 ballots, we know who voted, we just have to decide to count them or not.
If it is like Tim has said, that the error is on the outside of the official BC Elections envelope, they should be counted. It is not a case where someone has voted twice.
I was just getting used to the idea that Lorne, the gay Uncle Tom, would be given a second chance to redeem himself. I don't think he deserves it. Tim, the gay community was widely chastised by Lorne after the election, he said we abandoned him, that he faught with passion for our issues. You and the gay community know better.
You have an obligation now to appeal this judgement, to sieze the opportunity for us.
For more on Lorne Mayencourt, Tim Stevenson, the gay Uncle Tom, Mary Polak, Lorne's Homophobic girlfriend use the Technorati search box in the side bar here and at From the Heartlands
3 comments:
The problem is chain of custody--if they haven't been put in the proper secret ballot envelopes, can we trust they haven't been tampered with?
This is sticky--I can see both points of view.
Thanks for the hat tip, btw.
I'm still interested to know what the voting rate was in the riding and if what I heard is true (that there was the lowest turnout in BC). Any way of finding out? If it's true, I think it's far more consequential than who won...
I am not sure yet what the percentage of voters was in Vancouver Burrard. 57% voted province wide up from 55% in 2001 down from 59% in 1996 and 64% in 1991 and 67% in 1986.
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