A TIMELY REMINDER THAT ALL VOTES DO MATTER

Even the fewest of ballots can make a difference, history has shown

A year ago this week, Elections B.C. completed the final count of an election for the ages, the closest in provincial history.

The overall results were momentous enough, confirming the B.C. Liberals had lost their legislative majority after 16 years and setting the stage for only the third change of government in more than four decades.

But there was also the cliffhanger within a cliffhanger, in the riding of CourtenayComox, where the count was the last to be finalized on May 24.

The battle there was a mini-drama all of its own, as reporters Rob Shaw and Richard Zussman discovered gathering information for A Matter of Confidence, their account of a watershed year in B.C. politics.

On election night, May 9, the preliminary count put New Democrat Ronna-Rae Leonard nine votes ahead of B.C. Liberal candidate Jim Benninger. Two weeks later minus a day, the recount of the election-night ballots pushed the NDP lead to 13 votes from the initial nine.

But then the counters turned their attention to the 2,000 or so ballots that hadn’t been tallied election night, including those cast absentee in and out of the province and the country.

First up were ballots from the special polling stations including hospitals. Those put the Liberal ahead by a whopping three votes — “a shocker” given the stakes, as the authors noted.

But by lunchtime on Wednesday the 24th, the New Democrat had opened up a 100-vote lead and she went on to finish 189 votes ahead, leaving the Liberals one short of a majority and setting the stage for the change of government.

In the course of their interviews, the authors turned up a few anecdotes that added colour to the numbers.

The overseer for the New Democrats was Glen Sanford, deputy executive director of the party, whose mother Karen won a squeaker for the NDP in an earlier version of the same riding in 1983.

The B.C. Conservatives, despite taking more than 2,000 votes in finishing fourth in the riding, did not send anyone to oversee the final ballot count.

“The B.C. Conservative Party had been decimated going into the 2017 election,” wrote the authors. “There was no party leader. There was no real platform. The party’s spokesperson quit during the campaign to lead his own fringe party and just 10 candidates ran in the 87 ridings across the province."

Still, in Courtenay-Comox they took more than enough votes to make a difference to the Liberals. “If even half of those Conservative votes had gone to them, Benninger would have won and the party would be celebrating a fifth straight majority.”

Indeed, had another 190 registered voters seen their way fit to vote Liberal, the party could have held on to power and Christy Clark might still be premier.

As for winning candidate Leonard, she left the oversight to her team and didn’t show for the final count either — albeit not for lack of interest but to minimize stress.

“She had received some advice from MLA Selina Robinson, who won her riding by 41 votes following a judicial recount in 2013. Robinson told Leonard she shouldn’t show up because ‘you don’t want to spoil any ballots by throwing up on them.’’’

When the final tally was announced by the scrutinizers for the three main parties, the Green team let out a big cheer, second only to the one from the New Democrats.

Sanford and others in the NDP did not miss taking the cheer as a sign of where the Greens were leaning in the pending negotiations with the New Democrats and Liberals on forming a government.

Which of course turned out to be the case.

Within less than a week, the Greens and New Democrats had concluded their power-sharing agreement, producing neither a coalition nor a minority government but something new for B.C.

There followed a few weeks of shenanigans by the Liberals, not content with how badly they’d made fools of themselves in blowing their majority and running a stand-pat election campaign that was as ill advised as it was arrogant.

On June 29, then-lieutenant-governor Judith Guichon made the judgment call that ensured no one in this province will ever again describe her office as purely ceremonial. That set the stage for the actual change of government, the anniversary of which is still almost eight weeks away from today.

But just as Guichon reminded us of the importance of the viceregal office, the final results of Election 2017 supplied new perspective on the importance of voting.

For a long time in this province, get-out-the-vote punditry on election day would invariably mention New Democrat Al Passarell, who in 1979 won his seat by one vote. Plus there was the double irony of his opponent in that campaign remembering, when it was too late, that he and his wife had both neglected to vote.

But even if Passarell had lost by one vote, the overall result of Election ’79 would have been the same — Bill Bennett’s Social Credit back for a second term, the NDP on the opposition side.

Now consider the drama that happened here last year and all the changes since — many of them welcome, others controversial and many more to come.

All that because of a margin of less than 200 ballots cast in one riding. Don’t let anyone tell you voting doesn’t matter.

Indeed, had another 190 registered voters seen their way fit to vote Liberal, the party could have held on to power and Christy Clark might still be premier.