PC leadership vote rife with ‘irregularities’, court told

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This article was published 10/12/2021 (1422 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The election for the leadership of Manitoba Progressive Conservatives was so riddled by irregularities, the only remedy is to rule it invalid, a lawyer for losing candidate Shelly Glover told a judge Friday.

“The results of the election were affected in such a material way that… we ask you to declare that the results of the election were invalid,” lawyer Dave Hill said in an hour-long submission before Queen’s Bench Justice James Edmond.

“If the election results were declared invalid and the PC party did not have a new vote, I’m not sure that would be a good move for the party, politically,” Hill said.

Heather Stefanson was elected leader, and thus became Manitoba’s premier, on Oct. 30, following a hotly contested race. Three days later, Glover, a former Winnipeg police officer and Conservative MP, launched court action calling for a new vote to be held.

In a sworn affidavit, Glover said her campaign was provided with a spreadsheet at 12:27 a.m. the day of the vote that showed the total number of ballots to be counted was 16,045. Later that day, the party announced Stefanson was the winner and premier-designate after receiving 8,405 votes, compared to 8,042 for Glover. The total number of ballots cast, it said, was 16,456 — 501 more than allegedly reported on the spreadsheet. It’s the basis of her allegation there were irregularities.

Party representatives said the spreadsheet, also referred to in court as a voter list, was known to include several inaccuracies and wasn’t intended as a true vote tally.

Hill argued there would be no reason to provide the spreadsheet to the Glover and Stefanson teams unless it was to give them the “magic number” necessary to win the election.

“Why would you send out a voter list if it was full of inaccuracies?” he said. “It absolutely doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Hill detailed several other “irregularities,” including allegations of unsealed ballot boxes and insufficient scrutineering and tally sheet protocols.

“In our submission, the irregularities are so numerous that one can only conclude that affects the numbers in the election,” Hill said.

Lawyer Harley Schachter, representing the PC party, dismissed the spreadsheet complaint as “irrelevant,” and said any blips in the election process were not significant enough to affect the outcome.

“There is no credible evidence that there were any invalid ballots at all,” he said.

Scrutineers for each candidate participated in the count at each ballot table and tally sheets showing the results for each table were agreed upon, Schachter said.

“The conclusion to be drawn is that the tally sheets are the best evidence as to the number of valid ballots to be counted,” Schachter said.

“The election was fundamentally fair,” he said. “Ms. Stefanson won and there is no basis in law, or in fact, to challenge or upset that result.”

It’s not up to the court to “force another election on the party,” Stefanson’s lawyer Jonathan Kroft told Edmond.

Party members can elect to do that themselves if they feel it is necessary.

“If the majority of them think there is a problem, they have a right to do that already,” Kroft said.

Edmond is expected to render his decision Dec. 17.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca