Vote recount rules 2014

This is a response in writing to CityHallWatch from Elections BC in November 2014. Clearly the bar is high for any citizens who suspect the vote count was inaccurate, bungled, or manipulated.

There are no specific provisions in the Vancouver Charter for an elector (or anyone else) to request that a local government recount ballots by hand if they were first counted electronically.  An elector could make an application to the Provincial Court for a judicial recount but only on one or more of the following bases:

(a) that votes were not correctly accepted or ballots were not correctly rejected as required by the rules of section 101;

(b) that a ballot account does not accurately record the number of valid votes for a candidate;

(c) that the final determination under section 107 did not correctly calculate the total number of valid votes for a candidate.

The document commencing an application must set out the facts on which the application is based and must be supported by affidavit as to those facts.

The recount provisions in the Vancouver Charter provide for the court to do the recount but there are no provisions for any other type of body to do the recount (i.e. no provisions for an independent party to conduct the recount). The Vancouver Charter also does not stipulate whether the count must be done in the same manner as the original count (i.e. there is no guarantee that a recount would be done by hand).

An application for a judicial recount must be made between the time official election results are declared and 9 days after the close of general voting (by November 24, 2014).

Ballots must be destroyed as soon as practicable following 8 weeks after the declaration of the official election results (so, first possible day to destroy them would be January 15, 2015).

 

Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development