Especially for Canadopers and friends, but which is of more interest and relevance to you: today’s provincial election in British Columbia, or the Comey firing?
I’m torn. I’ve voted in the BC election already, now I’m listening to NPR on Comey.
Interesting evening, for sure.
The BC election cannot result in the installment of a criminal enterprise in the White House that is so incompetent it could start a nuclear war.
I don’t think you’re giving Christy Clark enough credit!
Provincial governments in Canada have extremely limited scope to impact residents of other provinces. Plus BC politics has always been a bit bonkers. Maybe they could try bringing back Vander Zalm.
So I’m more interested in the Comey affair.
Definitely Comey.
And the election is too close to call at the moment, no clear majority, the Greens have picked up a second seat and it may be the first minority government in B.C. in generations.
I’m in the minority in that Comey was brief news item to me, the election will be the first story I look for tomorrow.
-DF
Global News currently shows the Liberals and NDP each elected/leading in 42 seats, and the Greens elected/leading in 3 seats.
Right now, I’m more interested in the BC elections (nail-biting!). But Comey is clearly the bigger and more significant story.
Definitely the Comey firing if only for the spectacle of seeing so many Democrats swivel on a dime and turn from attacking Comey to being his most ardent supporters.
I am not particularly excited about the BC election because I knew how it would play out beforehand: Christy Clark would get re-elected and Nanaimo would vote NDP, ensuring that this lovely municipality would continue to suck hind tit unto eternity. So it goes.
The Comey firing however… that looks like a pebble rolling down a hill, a steep one. As it rolls it will pick up more speed and momentum and other pebbles will follow along… and eventually rocks and eventually everything not nailed down. There has never been anything like this in modern political history. Even Nixon is like “Jesus fuck, slow down already!”
Liberals with one short of a majority, and an automatic re-count pending in Courtenay-Comox, where the NDP candidate leads by 9 votes. If that flips, the Liberals have a majority: 44, v 40 for the NDP and 3 for the Green. But then the Liberals would have to elect a Speaker, which takes it back to 43-43.
There’s going to be a lot of negotiating needed for this House.
Interesting: the Greens have said that their one requirement for supporting a government is an end to corporate and union donations to political parties.
However, given the current numbers and the requirement to elect a Speaker, the NDP and the Greens together don’t have the seats to form government, so not sure how much bargaining power the Greens will have with the Grits.
Pro-tip: Nobody in BC calls the BC Liberal Party “The Grits”. This is because the BC Liberal party are not really Liberals, and are not associated with the federal Liberal Party. They are a consortium of old right-wing Social Credit, Conservatives and Harper Party helpers. They are BC’s right-wing party.
Interesting theory, but in the event of a 43;43 tied vote in the BC Legislature, the speaker then votes to break the tie. If the speaker is a BC Liberal, then…
Nope, that’s not how it works in the Westminster systems. The Speaker is impartial between the Government and the Opposition, and there are well-defined parliamentary rules for how the Speaker votes in a tie.
-
If the tie vote comes at an intermediate stage (e.g. motion for the House to receive a Committee report), parliamentary practice is that the Speaker will cast a vote “to allow debate to continue” - i.e. vote in the way that keeps the issue moving forward procedurally, to allow the House to continue dealing with it. So in the case of a tie vote on a committee report, the Speaker breaks the tie in favour of receiving the committee report, so that the House can continue dealing with the issue.
-
But, on a final vote, the Speaker will not vote for a change in the status quo. If the Government wants to change the status quo, it has to come up with the votes itself. It can’t rely on the Speaker’s vote. That means that on a final vote on the budget or 3rd reading on a bill, if there is a tie, the Speaker votes against the proposal and in favour of the status quo. If that means a government bill is defeated, so be it, even if that may raise a confidence issue. The government has to have control of the House without relying on the Speaker.
These principles have evolved in the Westminster parliamentary system over the past 3 centuries. One of the recent occasions when a Speaker had to rely on these principles was a budget vote in the Commons under the Martin government. There was a tie at second reading. Speaker Milliken cast his vote in favour of the budget process continuing, because that fit with the requirement of furthering debate.
Ameridoper. Which state is BC? I don’t see it on my list.
British Columbia. The one with all the mountains.
Home of the elusive Socreds: huge herds of them used to roam and dominate the political landscape, but have fallen victim to the usual over-harvesting. As Euphonious Polemic suggests, it is rumoured that some have taken shelter in the wilds of the Liberal Party.
However, most Socreds are now past breeding age, so their survival as a species looks grim.
Two ridings are going to recounts:
Courtenay-Comox has a difference of nine votes between the NDP and the Liberal. The margin is 560 in Vancouver-False Creek. Courtenay-Comox might flip, but hard to see Vancouver-False Creek changing - that’s a pretty big margin.
You are correct in that recounts usually do not move the final numbers by very much… However, your posted margins are from the election day polls only, and although they do take into account the advance polls, they don’t take into account the absentee polls. These votes have not yet been counted. There are an estimated 176,000 across the province, and approx. 1500 in the Courtenay Comox riding. When all is said and done, the difference may be more than 9.
So we have to wait for mail-in/absentee vote numbers to be tallied, and THEN we’ll get a recount.