BC Conservative Leader John Rustad says the party has new evidence of “election irregularities” he says took place in the Surrey-Guildford riding during the provincial election last fall.
The BC NDP won the riding by just 22 votes in the October provincial election, which led the party to win a majority government by just one seat. The Conservative candidate in the riding, Honveer Singh Randhawa, had previously alleged there were voting issues in the riding.
The new evidence presented by Rustad at a press conference on Feb. 27, centres around an affidavit from a Green Party candidate regarding votes cast from a residential care centre, Argyll Lodge, the Tories say was a primary site of irregular voting patterns.
The BC Conservatives previously said in January that 21 mail-in votes were cast from Argyll Lodge, a licensed care home for adults with chronic mental illness and substance use disorders, which has a 25-bed capacity and is located 80 metres from the nearest polling station. The Tories also said a resident had been told how to complete their mail-in ballot package by a third party, and some residents had denied requesting a mail-in ballot or even knowing that a provincial election was happening.
Rustad told reporters on Feb. 27 that his party had received sworn testimony from the Green Party candidate for the riding, Manjeet Singh Sahota, saying that when Sahota had visited Argyll Lodge while campaigning, he was told the residents were elderly and incapable of voting and he was turned away.
“There are serious irregularities that have happened during this election,” Rustad said.
“It makes me very, very angry to think that our vulnerable citizens, our seniors, have been potentially taken advantage of, in terms of how the election process has worked British Columbia. I find that very, very disturbing,” he added.
Argyll Lodge did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment. Manager of the facility, Baljit Kandola, previously told Global News that there was “no truth” to the allegations.
The Tories allege there were other irregularities in the Surrey-Guildford riding aside from that of Argyll Lodge, including 22 voters who cast ballots in Surrey-Guildford that did not reside in the riding and were not eligible to vote. They said one voter also voted twice using two slightly different names.
The BC Conservatives asked Elections BC at the beginning of January to investigate allegations of violations of the Election Act in the riding. The organization had began its investigation but said weeks later it had suspended its review since the Supreme Court of British Columbia was considering a similar claim from Randhawa. Elections BC said it would consider whether to resume its review of the complaint after the judiciary had ruled on the petition.
The Epoch Times contacted Elections BC for comment on the latest information presented by Rustad but did not receive a response by publication time.
Rustad questioned why BC Elections had decided not to look into the allegations, and is calling for an “independent review” of the allegations by a third party.
“We are not going to let up on this. We are going to continue to push this issue because of the importance it has to our democracy in British Columbia,” he said.
