BC Conservatives call out potential election fraud⧸issues - Riding lost by only 22 votes!
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Summary
BC Tory Leader John Rustad and Candidate Hanvir Randha Randhawa hold a press conference on election irregularities in the 2019 BC election. They discuss what they have found so far and what they are doing to investigate further.
Transcript
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Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. We have a crazy story to discuss coming out of British Columbia
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today that many of you have already messaged me about or tagged me in on social media. I was
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already going to talk about it, but it's just demonstrative of the fact that everyone really
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cares about what's going on here. So BC Conservative leader John Rustad and the BC
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Conservative candidate for the riding of Surrey Guilford in the last provincial election,
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on Virindawa, just did a press conference on election irregularities in the BC provincial
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election that of course took place back in October of 2024. I think that this was big news and it
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definitely isn't nothing, and so I want to discuss it with you today, but first I will go over to what
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John had said in this press conference, and then we will discuss what could happen based on all the
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information they are both going to come out with, as well as the information they are soliciting from
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the public. So since the election, we have had a group of people that have been looking into a number
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of things, a number of issues that have come up and that have been raised. And we felt important at this
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point to share what we have found to date, but also to indicate that there is more work that still
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needs to be done with regards to this. I've heard many stories about, for example, non-Canadian citizens
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who have voted in this election. However, that's something that we can't prove because obviously
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no one's going to be coming forward and putting up their hands saying, you know, please have me eligible
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for a fine and put me in jail. So these are the types of things that are hard to put on in terms of it,
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which is one of the reasons why we'll have a recommendation associated with that as well.
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We found other cases where an individual went to vote and was told they couldn't vote because
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somebody had already voted. Somebody had already registered a vote in their name. Errors can be
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made. We can understand those sort of things. Found another incident, for example, where an individual
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was registered as voting who said they didn't vote. Okay. Once again, you don't know for sure how those
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things play out. And I just want to cut this off here for just a second because we have to
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contextualize why individual anecdotes actually do matter here. Hanvir Randhawa standing to John
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Rustad's left, or I guess standing to his right, lost the riding of Sir Guilford to the incumbent Gary
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Begg by 22 votes. That is as thin of a margin as you can possibly get in politics. Every once in a while
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you do to get a case where somebody loses or wins by a single vote, but this is extremely thin.
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And Hanvir is going to get into it in just a bit that in their riding, they already have more than
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enough irregularities that should trigger a by-election and they still haven't really even
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scratched below the surface of asking people about other issues. And small issues do matter when
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whoever wins that riding decides if it's an NDP majority government or minority government.
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Yes, if there's 50 irregularities in a race where a thousand votes end up putting someone over the
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top, we can kind of ignore it. Mistakes can be made. But as John Rustad is going to get into,
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it's actually a lot of the problems and the lax rules are the problem of changes that David Eby made
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The kinds of things that we hear. But I think probably some of the more disturbing things that we have
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found is in particular in the riding of Surrey-Guilford. And Hanvir was our candidate here in Surrey-Guilford
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and he's here to share a few words as well with regards to the work that he's been doing in terms
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of follow-up on the election. And in that particular riding, we found a case of a double vote, somebody who
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voted twice. We have found a case where there have been at least almost two dozen ballots that were cast
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from people who are not registered or not currently. Sorry, let me rephrase that. Whose place of residence
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that was on elections BC is not where they currently live. And that could be a massive deal because
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even if that person wanted to vote in good faith and they showed up to the normal place they usually
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went to to vote, but they had moved seven blocks away and they actually were in a different riding,
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that also shapes the election outcome. And so this is all like, this is all very,
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when I saw, not factual stuff because we should obviously have to go in and verify the facts of this
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case, but that's very like real stuff. That's not like an abstract theoretical way that maybe a vote
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wasn't cast that should have been cast. Like, Oh, this voting station had to shut down. And if,
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and that would have added 50 votes to our total, but like, no, this is like literally somebody voted
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twice. Somebody voted who wasn't in the riding, stuff like that, that is provable that vote should
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not count sort of stuff. Follow up that's needed to find out just to make sure to know just where they
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did that. Did they live in the riding or did they live outside of the riding and use a different
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address to be able to vote in the riding? One of the more serious issues we have found was associated
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with a, uh, a care facility, a senior's home where, um, 21, um, mail-in ballots were cast,
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mail-in ballots where the voting station was just 80 meters across the road from where this facility was,
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was, uh, uh, located. And individuals in that, uh, facility have come forward with affidavits with
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regards to, um, uh, voting, regards to what happened associated with that. There's concern that, uh, these
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votes, um, that a third party has come in, uh, and, uh, being partaken and part of how these votes were cast
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and done. It is a serious concern that needs to be looked into, uh, with regards to, uh, uh, an
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investigation. So already this is a fairly shocking blockbuster press conference they have, and it got
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more detailed when Hanvir Randhawa ended up speaking. And I know Hanvir, so you could say I'm a little
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biased here, but I know him. That guy worked his butt off in Surrey Guilford. That guy walked around
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with a Roman legion of volunteers everywhere. He went door knocking, handing out literature,
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putting up signs. He's not some chump who thinks that I got messed over when he didn't work hard.
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That guy worked super hard. So I think that guy deserves to have an inquiry. So to be clear,
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what the conservatives are going to do is that the conservative party is demanding a legislative
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inquiry into the election procedures to find other issues around voting. And they're calling for
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basically a suspension of penalties for anyone who may have voted wrongly because you don't want
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people to be silent just because if they say something, they're going to get targeted when
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it might've been a non-citizen who voted, who was told they can vote. They ended up casting a ballot
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and their registration was not like, it was not shown that they were not a citizen. So they were able to
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cast a ballot and then that person gets fined for saying anything. So you don't want that person to be
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fine so they can actually speak up. So that's something that John's calling for. They also
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want voting procedures looked at and then tightened because things were just done wrongly in the
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election. It's not because there's mass fraud. That's something we should get right. I don't want
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the comments to fill up with people being like, oh yeah, it should have been an 80 seat majority for
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the conservatives. That's not what's being said here. If there's any fraud in election, it's always
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going to be small scale. Somebody potentially in this case going into a care home who either
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doesn't work there or works there and basically filling up ballots on people's behalf because
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they have access to all their identification and can just get the person to sign off on it
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who probably didn't really know what's going on. That's a problem. And it's always going to be small
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scale like this. So this isn't saying like a riding that the conservatives lost by a thousand votes is
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going to be overturned or even 300. But when there's multiple ridings where the MVP or conservative
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candidate only won by less than 100 votes, any irregularities start to kind of really matter
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here because it shapes how the government is going to act. This isn't even like we're cutting around
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the edges and maybe two seats should have been flipped, but it was still been an NDP majority
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by a long shot. The NDP has a literal single seat majority. They have the exact 47 seats they need
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for a majority. Them going from 47 to 46 makes a really big deal here. So anyways, here is Hanveer
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speaking to the media. As you know, I'm Hanveer and Dava, so I ran for the election from Surrey Guilford
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electoral writing as a candidate for Conservative Party of BC. So at the end of the election on October 19,
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there was a 103 vote lead and with just a handful of votes after that, the lead was gone and I was
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trailing by 22 votes. So of course that raised reasonable concern. We asked for the voting list,
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the participation list from BC elections and BC elections provided the list, but in quite a
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cumbersome manner. I asked for the list, we asked for the list in categorized manner so we could see
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who has voted through mail-in ballots and who has voted to other alternative methods, but that was not
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provided to us. That is also a good point to keep in mind. They have found, I believe he's going to go
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on to say 46 irregularities in a writing that he only lost by 22 votes and which is already double
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the amount that make up the difference. And of course, some of them could be Conservative votes that
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would be taken out. Some could be NDP votes. You don't know, maybe they're all green voters and it
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really doesn't matter. But the thing is, he's also saying that it's hard to even track this stuff
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down because if you don't have all the information of who voted when to be able to fact check stuff,
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you're only having, you're having to rely on leads that come from the public. And I believe that the
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leads that came from this care home and other facilities came from people who lived there who
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were reaching out or their family members. And later, John Rustad, when answering media questions,
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even said some of this information came from people associated with the NDP campaign, bringing it to
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their attention. With the support that we had at hand and with John Rustad's amazing support as well,
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we were able to conduct a review of who had voted in Surrey Guilford writing and what contraventions
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possibly happened. So this particular lodge did stick out because there were 21 million ballots which
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were casted from this lodge. And this lodge is literally across the street from the voting place.
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This is the care home he's referring to as a lodge. Which is one of the schools. So that did raise
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further concerns. And under the section 109.01 of the Election Act, one individual can only assist one,
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another individual with the mail-in ballot package. So that raised a concern to us, but that also raises a
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bigger concern that this information was available to BC elections. So why did not it raise a concern to them?
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But for us to conduct this review that we did, and we found 45 irregularities, contraventions,
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and the gap between the leading NDP candidate and myself is 22. So 45 irregularities we have found
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possible irregularities at this point. So the gap is 22. And we are going to be bringing a petition in court
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shortly as well as to make the election in Surrey Guilford invalid. And that's specifically
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uh Hanvir and his campaign bringing that uh challenge forward. The Conservative Party of BC is not
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part of that challenge. That's not because they don't believe in it. I think it's the whole point
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is that he's already a lawyer. He can already do the legal work himself. So he's going to take take it
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forward that way. And the Conservative Party is going to go through the legislative inquiry side of things.
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Because the Conservative Party doesn't really need to be involved in this at all. It wouldn't it would
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just make the case more cumbersome. Plus this is the proper way of doing it in the sense that
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you need to have proper standing to bring forward a complaint. The BC Conservatives in theory could
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technically be denied looking into this because they don't have standing because they're not the
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actual candidate who was potentially uh like suffered a loss through bad uh election procedures and
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irregularities. So Hanvir is the correct person to be bringing this one forward. Because the point at
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hand is that the justice must prevail and the democracy must be protected. The voices of these voters
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whoever is voting is voting for a reason. They want the right government or they want their vote should
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be counted in a rightful manner. So this entire endeavor has not been easy but we have finally as
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as Mr. Rustad has explained as well there are 45 contraventions possible possible contraventions of
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the election act and especially this lodge as it did stick out. So we need we are asking BC elections and the
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complaint that you have a copy they redacted that we are asking BC elections to do their thorough investigation
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into this and also if if it does point to irregularities then other institutions similarly to the same
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should also be looked into. So that is where we sit with this and Mr. Rustad if you have anything else
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to add. So just to be clear a complaint has been filed with elections BC um and uh and what we found in
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that in that facility uh we have heard from people that have come forward and talked about similar
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issues with other facilities and that to me is what is very concerning because there may be a pattern.
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It's something that still needs to be investigated we still need to be able to track down um the the
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work that's in there. We're going to continue doing the work uh that we can do to look at and to continue
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to follow up on this but it's important now I think that elections BC gets involved uh with this process as
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well as the independent review to be able to make sure that what is being done here uh is all uh
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revealed uh and all up and up and that we can make sure with confidence going forward that the
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election process in British Columbia uh can be relied on and defended. This this is where I actually will
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give a small critique to the BC conservatives this is why after the BC provincial election on October 19th
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and all the recounts that had to happen and whatnot never say the election was perfect full integrity
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all that stuff I never said that but I also have always resisted people saying like the BC NDP only
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won because of election fraud even then we don't know that we don't know one way or the other even
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then if Surrey Guilford somehow is flipped through an investigation or a by-election takes place and the
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conservatives win that one or maybe the NDP still wins it that still wouldn't really mean anything in
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terms of well that wouldn't actually flip who won the election that would just flip a single riding
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and the BC NDP would just have a minority government but I've always taken the position that I would just
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say that I don't have any evidence yet and if evidence comes forward that's good this is evidence
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coming forward so there we go we can now evaluate these facts but as the conservative party don't come
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out and say it's actually a great election I observed that it was amazing because you end up the
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media is now going to say well you guys said and they have said this I watched the full interview
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or the press conference with the questions you already have a lot of media members from more
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lefty media sources saying well you said on the days after election day that it was a perfect election
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and everything was brilliant so what's changed it's like oh okay yeah I guess he said that um this is
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why you don't say this but it's like that doesn't mean anything they were supporting the system before
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that and even David Eby the premier of British Columbia the NDP premier had to come out and say yeah
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ballots were not being handled properly we need this looked into BC election officials shouldn't
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be taking ballot boxes home which was happening in the early vote ballot boxes would be taken home
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like taped over and with all the security measures but you still shouldn't take it to somebody's house
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what happens that the person storing it and the person who has the ability to re-tape it and everything
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know each other and they're willing to commit fraud that doesn't mean it's happening but this is why you
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have tight procedures so that we cannot theorize ways of messing it over you lock up all the boxes
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in the same place where only like two different people need to have the same key or open it up or
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whatever that's the problem anyways now I think that this is one of those moments where I got to talk about
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the immediate reaction that many in the media have had to this and then I want to talk a little bit
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about it good thing is the BC conservatives aren't just pushing up this press conference and then saying
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nothing afterwards they have put out this statement alongside the uh the uh press conference they
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held they said leader of the opposition John Rustad is calling for immediate independent review of the
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provincial election this follows new evidence of irregularities in the pivotal riding of Surrey
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Guilford which the NDP won by just 22 votes and yeah I think this is absolutely the time where
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you need an inquiry but look at this post from oops from this guy Maxwell A. Cameron a political science
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science professor at UBC and he says rust edge allegations are pretty thin lots of vague claims
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without any evidence followed by recommendations that stoke misinformation and distrust all in the
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name of confidence in the election I believe he even deleted this his former post and posted this one
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because it's linked to the same uh or to a CBC article I saw another post from him and maybe I'll go and see
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if I can find it where he basically said this is election denialism for John Rustad to even care
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about to care about integrity here look at this here actually I found it he says Rustad's allegations
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don't pass the smell test oh yeah Maxwell A. Cameron's on the case guys super sleuth Max A. Cameron's
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already smelled out that this is incredible and he says this looks more like election denialism
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than defense of democracy this man's an academic you're you're just going to smell out that this
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looks like election denialism it's not that that goes along with the narrative from the 2020 US
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presidential election that Trump's people were denying the election and now you're trying to link
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the two oh no you just you just know oh the the evidence is pretty thin it's almost like they had to
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send out redacted uh information to the media because you can't just start naming people out of nowhere
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and so they're going to take this in front of a judge Hanvir is and the conservatives are asking
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for an inquiry they're not saying we have all the answers here is proof and then dumping out vague
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allegations they have evidence that are then going to be further investigated with help from the public
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and I would ask all of you if you know anything about problems in the election go forward go approach
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Hanvir's team go approach the BC conservatives for an inquiry make sure you actually have something to
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what you're claiming don't say that well this seems odd make sure you have actual you know evidence to
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support a claim because again it always annoys me when people are like well I and all my friends
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voted conservative so I can't see why the MVP would win the riding I was in it's like okay that doesn't
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mean anything but if you have like people you know who didn't vote who like say that or like somebody
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who went in to vote when they someone said a ballot's already been cast for you go call out that
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call out any other way where votes were being collected on mass by a single person because
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that's illegal all that sort of thing but this again annoys the heck out of me when you have
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somebody come out and and they say like well this seems like denialism how do you know aren't you
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supposed to actually care about evidence but you're just here to say oh you're a denier and that's what
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the media was doing during the questioning period some people were asking good questions other people were
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doing the whole well isn't this kind of like denialism isn't this going to make people question the
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voting process guys ask how wanting integrity is not a problem this is a pretty close riding I'd hope
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that we'd all care about it in fact there was a riding in the last provincial election that had to be
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overturned through uh like uh through a judicial uh vote count like like through like um a judicial
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recount because some of the votes were not counted properly or the votes were not like were not real
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like there was not a real ballot and they had to be destroyed that happens and so I think we should
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all wait and see what happens here and we should try and make sure that members of the public who know
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something are able to come forward and say something because again it actually does matter for the
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governance of British Columbia and I'll just add the cherry on top that it would be nice if the NDP
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had less power in this government because they are already screwing things up big time their tax revenues
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in this last fiscal year did not come in the way they thought they were and so they're about to run a
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massive deficit in 2025 by the way there's only going to be 20 67 sitting days in the legislature this year
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which allows for the BCNDP to stifle their opposition because there's only so many days a year out of the
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days that the legislature sits that the opposition gets to forward their own legislative proposals their
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own bills their own petitions and all this stuff and when there's only 67 days they're maybe going to
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get like 18 days maybe 20 days to actually do their own business you want as many sitting days as
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possible by the way 67 days means these people are working like part part-time they're not even
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working part-time and while yes MLAs work the rest of the year in their own constituency meeting with
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their constituents and doing other work research and all that the problem is is that now they're stifled
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and how they present that officially in the legislature where most business can actually be done like
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fully rather than just sort of doing background work when you present stuff in the legislature there is
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a little bit more oomph to it than just having to film videos in your office being able to present
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stuff on the record is kind of the point of being an MLA often anyways so that's it for me today guys
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