Opportunity for Judicial Recount closes today!

As per Section 138 of the Local Government Act - an elector from the respective local government jurisdiction (municipality or electoral area), a defeated election candidate or the respective Chief Election Officer seeking a judicial recount of the Nov 15th local election results has until 4:30pm today to launch one in BC Provincial Court.  A judicial recount may be pursued on the following grounds:

(a) That votes were not correctly accepted or ballots were not correctly rejected as required by the rules of section 129 - Local Government Act (LGA);


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


(c) That the final determination under section 135 of LGA did not correctly calculate the total number of valid votes for a candidate.

The full Section 138 of LGA is below:

Application for judicial recount

138 (1) An application may be made in accordance with this section for a judicial recount, to be undertaken by the Provincial Court, of some or all of the votes in an election.

(2) Except as provided in subsection (5), an application may only be made 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 129;
(b) that a ballot account does not accurately record the number of valid votes for a candidate;
(c) that the final determination under section 135 did not correctly calculate the total number of valid votes for a candidate.
(3) The time period during which an application may be made is limited to the time between the declaration of official election results under section 136 and 9 days after the close of general voting.
(4) The application may only be made by
(a) an elector of the municipality or electoral area for which the election was held,
(b) a candidate in the election or a candidate representative of a candidate in the election, or
(c) the chief election officer.
(5) An application must be made by the chief election officer if, at the end of the determination of official election results under section 135, a candidate cannot be declared elected because there is an equality of valid votes for 2 or more candidates.
(6) The document commencing an application must set out briefly the facts on which the application is based and must be supported by affidavit as to those facts.
(7) At the time an application is commenced, a time must be set for the recount that is adequate to allow the court to complete the recount within the time limit set by section 139.
(8) The person making the application must notify affected persons
(a) by immediately notifying the chief election officer and the affected candidates in the election, if any, that a judicial recount will be conducted at the time set under subsection (7), and
(b) within 24 hours of filing the document commencing the application, by delivering to these persons copies of that document, the accompanying affidavit and a notice of the time for the recount.

If an application for judicial re-count is not forthcoming from any of the three groups of individuals as referred to in Section 138(4) of LGA after 4:30pm today, then the successful election candidate may take the Oath of Office as early as Tuesday, Nov 25th until Monday, Jan 5th, 2015 being the last day for a successful election candidate to take the Oath of Office

~SF