Suffice to say if Carney does pull off such a majority (by hook n’ crook), this will have a rippling effect for all the other parties.
You’ll see PP be MUCH MORE weakened and probably fall to other leader.
The NDP would probably lean less towards a populist lefty leader, if no defections. If a member defects, you’ll see a swing towards a standard lefty muckraker (my opinion).
The Bloc’s strategy is always to disconnect Quebec voters with mentally engaging in Canadian federal political affairs on any non-provincial level so Blanchet would provide his wry comments while trying to keep above the daily wheeling and dealing.
I mentioned this earlier, but my sister, an NDP member who worked for an NDP MPP for years, was appalled by their campaign and commented about how the candidates she knew seemed to be campaigning for a completely different election. Her former employer was going around telling people how they shouldn’t vote Liberal because the Liberals would not promise to further expand dental care, while the voters were all asking what the NDP would do about Trump.
The NDP’s problems started with them becoming a de facto part of the Liberal Party for a few years, which they tried to leverage as “look what we accomplished” but it hurt their distinct brand. But then, like the CPC, they simply failed to campaign based on what was actually happening in the world.
Listening to those examples of ballot rejections (made a checkmark next to name, wrote out full name) they do not force a disqualification. The rules are clear as to what forces an acceptable ballot (one non-name/identifying mark in one circle), and what forces a rejected ballot (0 marks, multiple marks in multiple circles, writing any identifying info).
The rest is debatable (the judge will count it for himself in this case). If intent is clear, I see no reason to discount any ballot for being odd/non-standard. I’m a sucker for letting people’s will to be counted.
Also to add… a 77 vote difference after recount? That’s a tall swing to rely on rejected ballots. I’m predicting that the recount result will hold solid and the rejected ballots will not make up the difference here. Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore will stay Tory.
A woman who says she voted for the Bloc had her mail-in ballot returned to sender because of a misprinted postal code on the pre-printed envelope. If this is accurate, the outcome was actually a tie, but Elections Canada says there’s no mechanism available to them to alter the result of the judicial recount giving the riding to the Liberals by one vote.
It wasn’t quite that. The Meech Accord was running up against a deadline for a constitutional amendment and still needed to be passed by the Legislative Assemblies of Manitoba and Newfoundland.
The Manitoba Assembly had a rule that the Assembly had to hold public hearings on this sort of measure. If they held hearings according to the schedule in the rule, they would miss the deadline and Meech would not pass.
Rules of the Assembly can be waived on unanimous consent of the members. Each day, the Manitoba government house leader asked for unanimous consent to waive the requirement for public hearings.
Mr Harper stood up each day and said “no”.
When it became clear that Meech would not pass in Manitoba before the deadline, Premier Wells in Newfoundland declined to schedule the vote at all.
Meech needed unanimity of the provinces to pass. Since it didn’t pass in Manitoba and Newfoundland, it failed.
Given how parties are funded, the NDP and the Bloc are extremely unlikely to conduct a non-confidence vote in the near future. Getting a few extra seats would thus not make that much difference. I think PP ran a mediocre campaign, but the fact that the Liberals stole some of his policies implied they see strength there, even if one might be better at campaigning than governance. If there is not a better opposition leader on the horizon I do think he would hold the Liberals to a degree of accountability.
BLOC is saying there are more ballot issues. Elections Canada is saying more late ballots did arrive, but hasn’t said whether it was the printing defect at fault, or just a late mailing.
It is also worth noting PP got something like 41% of the popular vote, which is pretty high. This does not invalidate some criticisms which were (quite strangely) publicly made just before an election by provincial party members. I believe that foreign events were mainly responsible for the outcome, although this is debatable given the prior size of leads. I do think he should stay unless you can name someone clearly better.
Elections are run very well. Its quite impressive how this system of polling gets sets up (almost like magic) by a newly formed army of temporary workers (at the direction of a +300 gang of semi-permanent bureaucrats and their staff). However no matter how well things are conducted there are real world limitations we all must accept in our elections.
For the vast majority of times the procedural errors are so small that we just go on pretending that they didn’t happen; or more accurately, they happen within an acceptable rate as not to effect the results of the election itself, despite what effects they may have had on any individual as to be determined (I’m assuming no systematic error depriving people of a certain class/group their voting rights). However in cases where the results are so close that they are within the margin of error beyond what any human could account and correct for… just redo the election in that riding. I mean, 1 vote…jeez
We can have a legal procedure that awards someone the winner, but… such a result is arbitrary at this stage. IMHO, IANAL. A second vote should effectively settle it, with more authority than a judge’s ruling could ever do.
Coyne had a recent Globe column, based on an upcoming book, where he discusses weak links in Canadian democracy. I thought his arguments were (uncharacteristically) mediocre. In his defence, more people should be discussing these issues.
The Economist Intelligence Unit, World Population Review, Democracy Watch, etc. recently published data saying about only 40 countries qualified as a “full democracy”. Canada had lower scores (score reduced to #13) than Scandinavia, etc. The US did not achieve this rating (see link; score listed as #29)
It is true FPTP (first past the post) has its failings and Canada is imperfect. Coyne’s concerns revolved around PM power, party discipline, party memberships to nominate specific candidates over local preferences, not all votes being equal (hard to strictly do), the relative uselessness of Parliament as currently run and its proroguement, some legitimate provincial gripes… However, it would be foolish to not properly consider Canadian strengths:
largely keeping dark money out of politics
an essentially independent judiciary
essentially fair and respected election results
limited corruption
easy for anyone eligible to vote
in theory, easy to run for office
few insane candidates actually elected
mostly pro-science, pro-expert, Covid rational
toxic attacks generally unwelcomed
most parties and people largely agree on the most relevant issues
defined short election cycle
increasing patriotism
media imperfect but free and usually rational
Coyne’s specific arguments were undermined by the relative success of Québec Conservatives and Alberta Liberals, court judgements against governments, the change in results as global circumstances changed, and the increasing patriotism this prompted across our country.
I think the conservatives have a legitimate grievance that Canadas FPTP dynamics happens to undemocratically disadvantage them.
However I would say that this gripe…
… is at least partly a function of the opposition screwing up. The release valve for the majority taking things too far is that they lose their majority and hopefully the disincentive to rule with an iron fist and evade accountability from the public will eventually lead to a government that is more answerable to the public. However, if the opposition just reads the situation badly enough that they can’t capitalize I don’t really see this as a systemic issue.
Also, on stuff like party leaders not being answerable to the rank and file, really I would say the original sin of FPTP is that they try to avoid this in the first place. What works is to have a proportional system that encourages many parties, all of which are free to be as tyrannical as they want with their own members because the voters get to have a direct say rather than forcing voters to strategically vote for the some slate of candidates they get by happenstance.
A friend who used to be chair of the elections board in several large US jurisdictions explained the problem with redos is that, if the first election is, within the margin of error, a reflection an evenly split electorate, then the next election is going to turn out the same, with the same sources of error. What do you do when the 2nd election leans 1 vote the other way? Best 3 out of 5? There’s no basis to believe the second is any more legitimate than the first.
However, in this case, it is provable that human error was made (the returning officer did not correctly verify the address to the mail-in ballots in their riding). In an ideal world this error could be ignored as not relevant, but with a 1 vote difference it was. There is no way to sort out everyone who was effected. Most of the mail-ins still got where they needed to go, some just voted in person, but at least 5 were returned uncounted.
This time it was the returning officer’s fault. The vote was close enough that it mattered too. Redo it. If preventable human error is still made, and it matters…keep redoing it.
ETA: That’s kinda the problem with elections this close. All procedural errors become relevant. 1 vote. Yikes.
ETAA: Procedural counting errors are very easy to redo. Recount. Have a judge look at the ballots and judge for themself… procedural voting errors. That’s a hard bell to unring. I know redoing isn’t the same, but I feel it has more authority then a judge’s ruling.
You go with the 2nd count. Subject to review/appeal as per regulations.
But there is. Can’t speak to the exact counting mechanism used in Canada but in Australia the first count is done by each of the 50-100 polling station per electorate who send in their results for aggregation. By volunteers, at the end of a long day. Each party will probably have a scrutineer watching.
In the recount, all the ballots are at a single centralised counting centre. The count is conducted by AEC (Australian Electoral Commission) staff. Each party will definitely have multiple seasoned scrutineers. And everybody knows the result is close.
We’re not talking about a recount here, but a revote. The recount has been done, and the single vote margin is the result from that recount. The initial results were 60 votes or so apart, iirc.
If I’ve understood things correctly, the Liberal win by 1 vote is final so far as Elections Canada’s mandate goes. They have no procedure for appealing the results of the judicial recount. And, again, if I’m understanding things correctly, the courts don’t have the option of altering Elections Canada’s decision on who the winner was. What they can do is order a new election.