BC Election - May 9th, 2017

[squiggs96]

Originally Posted by rubecube

This isn't entirely true. The popular vote went up for them but it was by a completely inconsequential amount. That said, the Liberals won the popular vote by less than 1%, so I'd hardly consider that a huge mandate.

Oops. You are correct. The last numbers I looked at had the ndp dropping from the 39.71% in 2013, but I now see they went up to 39.86%. Before the absentee ballots are counted, they have rose by 792 votes. The Liberals are down 60,492 votes.

I think the BC Conservatives cost the Liberals the majority by running candidates in Maple Ridge-Mission and Courtenay-Comox. The ndp are leading Maple Ridge-Mission by 120 votes, and the Conservatives took 840 there.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by squiggs96

I think the BC Conservatives cost the Liberals the majority by running candidates in Maple Ridge-Mission and Courtenay-Comox. The ndp are leading Maple Ridge-Mission by 120 votes, and the Conservatives took 840 there.

Actually that's pretty funny. Did the Libertarians run any candidates in those ridings?

[squiggs96]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Actually that's pretty funny. Did the Libertarians run any candidates in those ridings?

144 Libertarian votes in the Maple Ridge-Mission riding. They had 29 other candidates, but none of them had any effect on those ridings. I have no idea what their platform is, what they stand for, or what type of people voted for them.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by squiggs96

144 Libertarian votes in the Maple Ridge-Mission riding. They had 29 other candidates, but none of them had any effect on those ridings. I have no idea what their platform is, what they stand for, or what type of people voted for them.

I saw an interview with one of their candidates on the local news here last week, and he was basically the "m'lady" meme in person. So pretty much like most libertarians. Their platform was your standard libertarian content; privatize everything, bring in school vouchers, and eliminate the carbon tax.

[combustiblefuel]

Originally Posted by squiggs96

144 Libertarian votes in the Maple Ridge-Mission riding. They had 29 other candidates, but none of them had any effect on those ridings. I have no idea what their platform is, what they stand for, or what type of people voted for them.

My riding Sannich- South also had members of the V.I.P party and Libertarian lol.

V.I.P had 123 votes and Libertarians had 158.

[combustiblefuel]

Originally Posted by squiggs96

After reading this post, I agree with you. The BC government should have invested more into basic education.

Jokes on you. I went to school in Alberta.

[squiggs96]

Originally Posted by opendoor

The military base thing is way overblown. CFB Comox is primarily tasked with defensive support, search and rescue, and patrols. It's not like they have a bunch of service members deployed overseas or something.

And as I mentioned above, in 2013 every riding on the island north of Victoria (and Victoria might've been the same but I didn't check) saw the NDP and Greens outperform their overall results in absentee ballots.

Here are some relevant points I found today:

In Courtenay-Comox, there were about 3,500 absentee ballots cast in 2013 and they slightly favoured the NDP, tightening Liberal Don McRae's margin of victory by less than one percentage point. But the boundaries have changed since then and the riding no longer includes some NDP-leaning areas.

Much has been made of the fact that Courtenay-Comox includes CFB Comox, a military base where Benninger served as commander for three years and home to, presumably, a number of personnel who are out of the riding and need to file absentee ballots.


However, Benninger estimates that about 40 to 60 members are currently deployed and of those, probably only five to 10 voted


"When you go away and you deploy for an extended period of time ... you want to make sure your family is set up for success while you're away. There's a lot of things to worry about to make sure that the separation goes as smoothly as possible. I'm pretty sure that voting is not near the top.''

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/05..._16569752.html

[Flash Walken]

In an article titled “Gerrymandered ridings gave BC Liberals narrow election win,” Will McMartin details in the Pacific Political Report newsletter how the BC Liberals succeeded in rigging the boundary setting process to benefit themselves.

McMartin is a long-time political consultant affiliated with the Social Credit and BC Conservative parties who for many years wrote columns for The Tyee.

“The province-wide vote on May 9 clearly demonstrated... that the latest redrawing of the province’s electoral map significantly favoured one political party — the governing BC Liberals,” he wrote in the newsletter.

When the government launched the process to review the constituency boundaries in 2013, it stipulated there could be no reduction in the number of seats in three areas: the North, the Cariboo-Thompson, and Columbia-Kootenay.

In total, 17 constituencies in those regions were “protected” or “frozen,” even though they are relatively sparsely populated.

Under B.C. law, constituencies are supposed to have similar populations to ensure equal representation. Other than in “special circumstances,” the law requires constituencies to be within 25 per cent of the provincial average. The government allowed constituencies in the three regions to have smaller populations.

In last week’s vote, the BC Liberals won in the majority of those smaller constituencies that they had protected, McMartin pointed out. “Of the 17 electoral districts with below-average populations, the BC Liberals won 13 — or three of every four,” he wrote, noting that each of those ridings had an average of 14,475 votes cast.

That was much better than the party fared in the province’s other 70 regular-sized constituencies. In those, where an average of 22,190 people voted, the BC Liberals won just 30 out of 70, or about two out of every five.

“It is clear that in choosing 87 Members of the Legislative Assembly in B.C.’s 41st general election, the ballots of those British Columbians who reside in the 17 favoured electoral districts had much greater weight than those of voters elsewhere in the province,” McMartin wrote.

“The ‘frozen’ ridings were essential to the BC Liberals’ attainment of an incredibly thin minority in the 2017 general election,” he said.

https://thetyee.ca/News/2017/05/17/G...-Election-Win/

[Regorium]

I don't know how to really deal with that situation, as it's an obvious rural/urban divide.

Rural votes have always been overrepresented at every level of government, yet when you look at actual policy (even by the party that won all those rural ridings), they generally deal primarily with urban issues.

If you don't give them that slight overrepresentation, rural voters will literally have zero representation and that's not fair either.

[opendoor]

It's not really rural vs. urban though. Rural representation is so important in Liberal strongholds like Peace River North (13K voters), Peace River South (8K), Cariboo North (12K), Nechako Lakes (9K), etc., but that all goes out the window in rural Vancouver Island and coastal ridings like North Island (24K), Mid-Island Pacific Rim (24K), Powell River-Sunshine Coast (23K), and Cowichan Valley (29K).

In fact, a voter in the mostly rural Cowichan Valley riding saw their vote be worth less than 1/3rd as much as a voter in places like Peace River South, Nechako Lakes, and Stikine. Those 3 areas get 3 MLAs with fewer votes cast than in the single election in Cowichan. You give the rural Vancouver Island ridings an MLA for every 10-12K voters like the Northern ridings get and we're looking at an NDP majority.

[Regorium]

Originally Posted by opendoor

It's not really rural vs. urban though. Rural representation is so important in Liberal strongholds like Peace River North (13K voters), Peace River South (8K), Cariboo North (12K), Nechako Lakes (9K), etc., but that all goes out the window in rural Vancouver Island and coastal ridings like North Island (24K), Mid-Island Pacific Rim (24K), Powell River-Sunshine Coast (23K), and Cowichan Valley (29K).

In fact, a voter in the mostly rural Cowichan Valley riding saw their vote be worth less than 1/3rd as much as a voter in places like Peace River South, Nechako Lakes, and Stikine. Those 3 areas get 3 MLAs with fewer votes cast than in the single election in Cowichan. You give the rural Vancouver Island ridings an MLA for every 10-12K voters like the Northern ridings get and we're looking at an NDP majority.

I mean, we could totally try something like that. Since the total number of seats don't change that just means Vancouver and Victoria get less seats?

Basically just swapping the NDP seats in Vancouver to the NDP seats in your proposed Cowichan.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Regorium

I mean, we could totally try something like that. Since the total number of seats don't change that just means Vancouver and Victoria get less seats?

Basically just swapping the NDP seats in Vancouver to the NDP seats in your proposed Cowichan.

No, it'd mean that rural Northern areas would be consolidated into ridings with more voters while rural Vancouver Island and coastal rural areas would get more seats so they're treated similarly to the Northern ridings.

[squiggs96]

The recount results are in. The ndp lead in Courtney-Comox went from 9 votes to 13 votes. The Maple Ridge-Mission lead went from 120 to 166.

Absentee ballots have not been counted.

[Weitz]

Why haven't all the votes been counted yet? The election was like 2 weeks ago. Seems weird to me.

[squiggs96]

After the noon (PDT) update, the Liberals have taken a 3 vote lead in Courtenay-Comox.

NDPs continue to lead Maple Ridge-Mission, now by 190 votes.

The Liberal lead in the Richmond-Queensborough riding is down to 101 votes.

The popular vote is now 40.53% to 40.13% in favour of the Liberals. The Liberals have 35.91% of the absentee ballots, while the NDP have 44.17%.

[squiggs96]

Fun tweet I found:

Richard Zussman‏Verified account @richardzussman

We're a long way away. But if it's a tie in Courtenay-Comox it would go to a by-election to break the tie. In PEI they flip a coin. #bcpoli

[squiggs96]

Courtenay-Comox

May 9th:
Liberal: 10,049
NDP: 10,058
Green: 4,907
Conservative: 2,061
Total: 27,075

After recount:
Liberal: 10,043
NDP: 10,056
Green: 4,905 ????
Conservative: 2,060 ????
Total: 27,064

As of noon today:
Liberal: 10,098
NDP: 10,095
Green: 4,939
Conservative: 2,072
Total: 27,204

That means only 140 absentee ballots have been counted out of 2,077.

[mrkajz44]

I too am a bit confused as to why the absentee counting is taking so long? I knew it wasn't going to be a day or two, but this seems much too long and from the sounds of it, they still are not close.

[squiggs96]

Originally Posted by mrkajz44

I too am a bit confused as to why the absentee counting is taking so long? I knew it wasn't going to be a day or two, but this seems much too long and from the sounds of it, they still are not close.

They have to send all the absentee ballots to a central location, and then sort them by riding. When you cast your ballot in any voting booth that is not your riding, you have cast an absentee ballot. All of the absentee ballots in each voting station are all in one box, regardless of where that vote is to be allocated. There are several hundred places to vote, and you can cast a vote for all 87 ridings at each one of these stations. The actual counting of this was to be started either last night or this morning. The preliminary count will be done today, and the recounts, if any, will be done tomorrow.

I think they could have just used FedEx and sent them on May 9th to the central station and started sorting them on May 10th. They could have had all the counting done by the 12th, but that seems pretty efficient for government. Also, with the election being a majority/minority by only 3 votes (currently), I don't mind them taking some time to get it correct. There should be an update in 5 minutes, and then another one 3 hours later.

[squiggs96]

Only change from the 3 close ridings at 2pm is Liberals extended their lead to 124 votes in Richmond-Queensborough.

Popular vote is now 40.46 to 40.19 for the Liberals. About 40,000 absentee ballots still to be counted.