Wednesday, February 14, 2018

BC Liberals win Kelowna-West!

Today - BC voters' in the electoral district of Kelowna West were asked to select 1 person from a list of 5 to represent them for the remainder of the 2017-21 term of the BC Legislature and after all the ballots were counted, Ben Stewart running under the BC Liberals' flag retook his seat this evening after resigning in 2013 to allow former BC Premier Christy Clark to have a seat in the Legislature for the 2013-17 Term.  Full unofficial results are below:


Name                Affiliation           Total Valid Votes          % of Popular Vote

Shelley Cook      BC NDP                    3,197                              23.47%
Kyle Geronazzo Libertarian                    110                                 0.81%
Ben Stewart        BC Liberal Party       7,692                               56.46%
Robert Stupka     BC Green Party         1,727                               12.68%
Mark Thompson Conservative                 898                                 6.59%

111 of 111 ballot boxes reported         13,624                                   100%

With the above results likely being declared official in the days to come, that leaves the MLA numbers in the BC Legislature as follows:

BC Liberals - 42
BC NDP - 41
BC Greens - 3
Independent - 1 (Darryl Plecas - House Speaker)

However, with the Confidence/Supply Agreement (click here) between the BC NDP/BC Greens signed in Summer 2017, the BC NDP will still continue as the provincial government until Fall 2021

Finally - in November, voters in any 1 of the 87 Provincial Electoral Districts, can begin recall proceedings against an MLA as per the Recall and Initiative Act - click here.  There has been a lot of public discussion around initiating recall proceedings against current BC Legislature Speaker (and Abbotsford South MLA) Darryl Plecas however the legal requirement is 40% of voters' in an provincial electoral district signing a petition to recall its' MLA within 60 days of the recall petition being issued by the Chief Electoral Officer.  Every recall petition ever issued has failed, although there was the recall petition against former BC Liberal MLA Paul Reitsma in June 1998 that came close to being successful but he resigned before the recall petition verification process was complete

~SF

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