The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - January 09, 2025


BC Conservatives call out potential election fraud⧸issues - Riding lost by only 22 votes!


Episode Stats

Length

23 minutes

Words per Minute

184.4713

Word Count

4,294

Sentence Count

127

Hate Speech Sentences

1


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

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. We have a crazy story to discuss coming out of British Columbia
00:00:06.380 today that many of you have already messaged me about or tagged me in on social media. I was
00:00:12.540 already going to talk about it, but it's just demonstrative of the fact that everyone really
00:00:17.280 cares about what's going on here. So BC Conservative leader John Rustad and the BC
00:00:22.780 Conservative candidate for the riding of Surrey Guilford in the last provincial election,
00:00:27.200 on Virindawa, just did a press conference on election irregularities in the BC provincial
00:00:33.560 election that of course took place back in October of 2024. I think that this was big news and it
00:00:40.660 definitely isn't nothing, and so I want to discuss it with you today, but first I will go over to what
00:00:46.860 John had said in this press conference, and then we will discuss what could happen based on all the
00:00:52.260 information they are both going to come out with, as well as the information they are soliciting from
00:00:57.620 the public. So since the election, we have had a group of people that have been looking into a number
00:01:04.200 of things, a number of issues that have come up and that have been raised. And we felt important at this
00:01:10.280 point to share what we have found to date, but also to indicate that there is more work that still
00:01:16.320 needs to be done with regards to this. I've heard many stories about, for example, non-Canadian citizens
00:01:25.280 who have voted in this election. However, that's something that we can't prove because obviously
00:01:31.680 no one's going to be coming forward and putting up their hands saying, you know, please have me eligible
00:01:35.680 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,
00:01:42.080 which is one of the reasons why we'll have a recommendation associated with that as well.
00:01:46.480 We found other cases where an individual went to vote and was told they couldn't vote because
00:01:52.480 somebody had already voted. Somebody had already registered a vote in their name. Errors can be
00:01:59.200 made. We can understand those sort of things. Found another incident, for example, where an individual
00:02:05.200 was registered as voting who said they didn't vote. Okay. Once again, you don't know for sure how those
00:02:11.600 things play out. And I just want to cut this off here for just a second because we have to
00:02:16.640 contextualize why individual anecdotes actually do matter here. Hanvir Randhawa standing to John
00:02:24.080 Rustad's left, or I guess standing to his right, lost the riding of Sir Guilford to the incumbent Gary
00:02:30.480 Begg by 22 votes. That is as thin of a margin as you can possibly get in politics. Every once in a while
00:02:38.160 you do to get a case where somebody loses or wins by a single vote, but this is extremely thin.
00:02:44.400 And Hanvir is going to get into it in just a bit that in their riding, they already have more than
00:02:49.520 enough irregularities that should trigger a by-election and they still haven't really even
00:02:54.320 scratched below the surface of asking people about other issues. And small issues do matter when
00:03:00.880 whoever wins that riding decides if it's an NDP majority government or minority government.
00:03:06.640 Yes, if there's 50 irregularities in a race where a thousand votes end up putting someone over the
00:03:11.760 top, we can kind of ignore it. Mistakes can be made. But as John Rustad is going to get into,
00:03:17.760 it's actually a lot of the problems and the lax rules are the problem of changes that David Eby made
00:03:24.880 back in 2019.
00:03:26.000 The kinds of things that we hear. But I think probably some of the more disturbing things that we have
00:03:30.960 found is in particular in the riding of Surrey-Guilford. And Hanvir was our candidate here in Surrey-Guilford
00:03:37.040 and he's here to share a few words as well with regards to the work that he's been doing in terms
00:03:42.400 of follow-up on the election. And in that particular riding, we found a case of a double vote, somebody who
00:03:51.120 voted twice. We have found a case where there have been at least almost two dozen ballots that were cast
00:04:01.440 from people who are not registered or not currently. Sorry, let me rephrase that. Whose place of residence
00:04:11.280 that was on elections BC is not where they currently live. And that could be a massive deal because
00:04:18.400 even if that person wanted to vote in good faith and they showed up to the normal place they usually
00:04:23.440 went to to vote, but they had moved seven blocks away and they actually were in a different riding,
00:04:28.560 that also shapes the election outcome. And so this is all like, this is all very,
00:04:35.120 when I saw, not factual stuff because we should obviously have to go in and verify the facts of this
00:04:40.880 case, but that's very like real stuff. That's not like an abstract theoretical way that maybe a vote
00:04:46.720 wasn't cast that should have been cast. Like, Oh, this voting station had to shut down. And if,
00:04:51.440 and that would have added 50 votes to our total, but like, no, this is like literally somebody voted
00:04:57.840 twice. Somebody voted who wasn't in the riding, stuff like that, that is provable that vote should
00:05:03.120 not count sort of stuff. Follow up that's needed to find out just to make sure to know just where they
00:05:07.840 did that. Did they live in the riding or did they live outside of the riding and use a different
00:05:12.240 address to be able to vote in the riding? One of the more serious issues we have found was associated
00:05:18.800 with a, uh, a care facility, a senior's home where, um, 21, um, mail-in ballots were cast,
00:05:28.080 mail-in ballots where the voting station was just 80 meters across the road from where this facility was,
00:05:34.640 was, uh, uh, located. And individuals in that, uh, facility have come forward with affidavits with
00:05:41.040 regards to, um, uh, voting, regards to what happened associated with that. There's concern that, uh, these
00:05:48.560 votes, um, that a third party has come in, uh, and, uh, being partaken and part of how these votes were cast
00:05:56.240 and done. It is a serious concern that needs to be looked into, uh, with regards to, uh, uh, an
00:06:02.880 investigation. So already this is a fairly shocking blockbuster press conference they have, and it got
00:06:10.320 more detailed when Hanvir Randhawa ended up speaking. And I know Hanvir, so you could say I'm a little
00:06:16.080 biased here, but I know him. That guy worked his butt off in Surrey Guilford. That guy walked around
00:06:22.160 with a Roman legion of volunteers everywhere. He went door knocking, handing out literature,
00:06:26.880 putting up signs. He's not some chump who thinks that I got messed over when he didn't work hard.
00:06:33.120 That guy worked super hard. So I think that guy deserves to have an inquiry. So to be clear,
00:06:37.920 what the conservatives are going to do is that the conservative party is demanding a legislative
00:06:43.440 inquiry into the election procedures to find other issues around voting. And they're calling for
00:06:50.000 basically a suspension of penalties for anyone who may have voted wrongly because you don't want
00:06:57.360 people to be silent just because if they say something, they're going to get targeted when
00:07:01.920 it might've been a non-citizen who voted, who was told they can vote. They ended up casting a ballot
00:07:07.760 and their registration was not like, it was not shown that they were not a citizen. So they were able to
00:07:13.040 cast a ballot and then that person gets fined for saying anything. So you don't want that person to be
00:07:18.000 fine so they can actually speak up. So that's something that John's calling for. They also
00:07:21.680 want voting procedures looked at and then tightened because things were just done wrongly in the
00:07:27.360 election. It's not because there's mass fraud. That's something we should get right. I don't want
00:07:31.920 the comments to fill up with people being like, oh yeah, it should have been an 80 seat majority for
00:07:36.240 the conservatives. That's not what's being said here. If there's any fraud in election, it's always
00:07:41.520 going to be small scale. Somebody potentially in this case going into a care home who either
00:07:46.400 doesn't work there or works there and basically filling up ballots on people's behalf because
00:07:51.520 they have access to all their identification and can just get the person to sign off on it
00:07:56.160 who probably didn't really know what's going on. That's a problem. And it's always going to be small
00:08:01.760 scale like this. So this isn't saying like a riding that the conservatives lost by a thousand votes is
00:08:06.080 going to be overturned or even 300. But when there's multiple ridings where the MVP or conservative
00:08:11.520 candidate only won by less than 100 votes, any irregularities start to kind of really matter
00:08:17.840 here because it shapes how the government is going to act. This isn't even like we're cutting around
00:08:22.240 the edges and maybe two seats should have been flipped, but it was still been an NDP majority
00:08:26.880 by a long shot. The NDP has a literal single seat majority. They have the exact 47 seats they need
00:08:33.520 for a majority. Them going from 47 to 46 makes a really big deal here. So anyways, here is Hanveer
00:08:41.520 speaking to the media. As you know, I'm Hanveer and Dava, so I ran for the election from Surrey Guilford
00:08:47.920 electoral writing as a candidate for Conservative Party of BC. So at the end of the election on October 19,
00:08:56.000 there was a 103 vote lead and with just a handful of votes after that, the lead was gone and I was
00:09:01.680 trailing by 22 votes. So of course that raised reasonable concern. We asked for the voting list,
00:09:07.920 the participation list from BC elections and BC elections provided the list, but in quite a
00:09:15.120 cumbersome manner. I asked for the list, we asked for the list in categorized manner so we could see
00:09:20.720 who has voted through mail-in ballots and who has voted to other alternative methods, but that was not
00:09:27.520 provided to us. That is also a good point to keep in mind. They have found, I believe he's going to go
00:09:33.200 on to say 46 irregularities in a writing that he only lost by 22 votes and which is already double
00:09:39.440 the amount that make up the difference. And of course, some of them could be Conservative votes that
00:09:44.560 would be taken out. Some could be NDP votes. You don't know, maybe they're all green voters and it
00:09:48.240 really doesn't matter. But the thing is, he's also saying that it's hard to even track this stuff
00:09:54.320 down because if you don't have all the information of who voted when to be able to fact check stuff,
00:09:59.360 you're only having, you're having to rely on leads that come from the public. And I believe that the
00:10:04.640 leads that came from this care home and other facilities came from people who lived there who
00:10:10.000 were reaching out or their family members. And later, John Rustad, when answering media questions,
00:10:14.560 even said some of this information came from people associated with the NDP campaign, bringing it to
00:10:19.040 their attention. With the support that we had at hand and with John Rustad's amazing support as well,
00:10:26.240 we were able to conduct a review of who had voted in Surrey Guilford writing and what contraventions
00:10:33.280 possibly happened. So this particular lodge did stick out because there were 21 million ballots which
00:10:39.200 were casted from this lodge. And this lodge is literally across the street from the voting place.
00:10:45.520 This is the care home he's referring to as a lodge. Which is one of the schools. So that did raise
00:10:51.920 further concerns. And under the section 109.01 of the Election Act, one individual can only assist one,
00:10:59.520 another individual with the mail-in ballot package. So that raised a concern to us, but that also raises a
00:11:07.360 bigger concern that this information was available to BC elections. So why did not it raise a concern to them?
00:11:12.640 But for us to conduct this review that we did, and we found 45 irregularities, contraventions,
00:11:20.080 and the gap between the leading NDP candidate and myself is 22. So 45 irregularities we have found
00:11:28.640 possible irregularities at this point. So the gap is 22. And we are going to be bringing a petition in court
00:11:37.520 shortly as well as to make the election in Surrey Guilford invalid. And that's specifically
00:11:44.080 uh Hanvir and his campaign bringing that uh challenge forward. The Conservative Party of BC is not
00:11:50.800 part of that challenge. That's not because they don't believe in it. I think it's the whole point
00:11:55.360 is that he's already a lawyer. He can already do the legal work himself. So he's going to take take it
00:12:00.720 forward that way. And the Conservative Party is going to go through the legislative inquiry side of things.
00:12:05.920 Because the Conservative Party doesn't really need to be involved in this at all. It wouldn't it would
00:12:09.760 just make the case more cumbersome. Plus this is the proper way of doing it in the sense that
00:12:14.640 you need to have proper standing to bring forward a complaint. The BC Conservatives in theory could
00:12:20.960 technically be denied looking into this because they don't have standing because they're not the
00:12:24.800 actual candidate who was potentially uh like suffered a loss through bad uh election procedures and
00:12:32.400 irregularities. So Hanvir is the correct person to be bringing this one forward. Because the point at
00:12:38.320 hand is that the justice must prevail and the democracy must be protected. The voices of these voters
00:12:46.080 whoever is voting is voting for a reason. They want the right government or they want their vote should
00:12:54.720 be counted in a rightful manner. So this entire endeavor has not been easy but we have finally as
00:13:02.640 as Mr. Rustad has explained as well there are 45 contraventions possible possible contraventions of
00:13:08.160 the election act and especially this lodge as it did stick out. So we need we are asking BC elections and the
00:13:15.680 complaint that you have a copy they redacted that we are asking BC elections to do their thorough investigation
00:13:20.880 into this and also if if it does point to irregularities then other institutions similarly to the same
00:13:28.400 should also be looked into. So that is where we sit with this and Mr. Rustad if you have anything else
00:13:35.920 to add. So just to be clear a complaint has been filed with elections BC um and uh and what we found in
00:13:45.760 that in that facility uh we have heard from people that have come forward and talked about similar
00:13:51.840 issues with other facilities and that to me is what is very concerning because there may be a pattern.
00:13:57.600 It's something that still needs to be investigated we still need to be able to track down um the the
00:14:02.560 work that's in there. We're going to continue doing the work uh that we can do to look at and to continue
00:14:08.960 to follow up on this but it's important now I think that elections BC gets involved uh with this process as
00:14:14.640 well as the independent review to be able to make sure that what is being done here uh is all uh
00:14:20.000 revealed uh and all up and up and that we can make sure with confidence going forward that the
00:14:25.200 election process in British Columbia uh can be relied on and defended. This this is where I actually will
00:14:31.760 give a small critique to the BC conservatives this is why after the BC provincial election on October 19th
00:14:39.920 and all the recounts that had to happen and whatnot never say the election was perfect full integrity
00:14:45.440 all that stuff I never said that but I also have always resisted people saying like the BC NDP only
00:14:51.680 won because of election fraud even then we don't know that we don't know one way or the other even
00:14:57.440 then if Surrey Guilford somehow is flipped through an investigation or a by-election takes place and the
00:15:03.040 conservatives win that one or maybe the NDP still wins it that still wouldn't really mean anything in
00:15:08.480 terms of well that wouldn't actually flip who won the election that would just flip a single riding
00:15:13.040 and the BC NDP would just have a minority government but I've always taken the position that I would just
00:15:17.760 say that I don't have any evidence yet and if evidence comes forward that's good this is evidence
00:15:22.000 coming forward so there we go we can now evaluate these facts but as the conservative party don't come
00:15:27.040 out and say it's actually a great election I observed that it was amazing because you end up the
00:15:31.600 media is now going to say well you guys said and they have said this I watched the full interview
00:15:36.560 or the press conference with the questions you already have a lot of media members from more
00:15:41.200 lefty media sources saying well you said on the days after election day that it was a perfect election
00:15:46.960 and everything was brilliant so what's changed it's like oh okay yeah I guess he said that um this is
00:15:54.000 why you don't say this but it's like that doesn't mean anything they were supporting the system before
00:15:58.560 that and even David Eby the premier of British Columbia the NDP premier had to come out and say yeah
00:16:04.960 ballots were not being handled properly we need this looked into BC election officials shouldn't
00:16:10.080 be taking ballot boxes home which was happening in the early vote ballot boxes would be taken home
00:16:15.120 like taped over and with all the security measures but you still shouldn't take it to somebody's house
00:16:19.840 what happens that the person storing it and the person who has the ability to re-tape it and everything
00:16:25.440 know each other and they're willing to commit fraud that doesn't mean it's happening but this is why you
00:16:29.680 have tight procedures so that we cannot theorize ways of messing it over you lock up all the boxes
00:16:35.280 in the same place where only like two different people need to have the same key or open it up or
00:16:40.240 whatever that's the problem anyways now I think that this is one of those moments where I got to talk about
00:16:49.360 the immediate reaction that many in the media have had to this and then I want to talk a little bit
00:16:53.840 about it good thing is the BC conservatives aren't just pushing up this press conference and then saying
00:16:58.480 nothing afterwards they have put out this statement alongside the uh the uh press conference they
00:17:04.080 held they said leader of the opposition John Rustad is calling for immediate independent review of the
00:17:09.200 provincial election this follows new evidence of irregularities in the pivotal riding of Surrey
00:17:13.680 Guilford which the NDP won by just 22 votes and yeah I think this is absolutely the time where
00:17:19.360 you need an inquiry but look at this post from oops from this guy Maxwell A. Cameron a political science
00:17:26.480 science professor at UBC and he says rust edge allegations are pretty thin lots of vague claims
00:17:33.360 without any evidence followed by recommendations that stoke misinformation and distrust all in the
00:17:38.560 name of confidence in the election I believe he even deleted this his former post and posted this one
00:17:45.840 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
00:17:51.840 if I can find it where he basically said this is election denialism for John Rustad to even care
00:17:58.880 about to care about integrity here look at this here actually I found it he says Rustad's allegations
00:18:05.520 don't pass the smell test oh yeah Maxwell A. Cameron's on the case guys super sleuth Max A. Cameron's
00:18:12.000 already smelled out that this is incredible and he says this looks more like election denialism
00:18:17.520 than defense of democracy this man's an academic you're you're just going to smell out that this
00:18:24.080 looks like election denialism it's not that that goes along with the narrative from the 2020 US
00:18:29.680 presidential election that Trump's people were denying the election and now you're trying to link
00:18:34.400 the two oh no you just you just know oh the the evidence is pretty thin it's almost like they had to
00:18:40.560 send out redacted uh information to the media because you can't just start naming people out of nowhere
00:18:46.640 and so they're going to take this in front of a judge Hanvir is and the conservatives are asking
00:18:51.200 for an inquiry they're not saying we have all the answers here is proof and then dumping out vague
00:18:56.480 allegations they have evidence that are then going to be further investigated with help from the public
00:19:02.640 and I would ask all of you if you know anything about problems in the election go forward go approach
00:19:09.040 Hanvir's team go approach the BC conservatives for an inquiry make sure you actually have something to
00:19:15.680 what you're claiming don't say that well this seems odd make sure you have actual you know evidence to
00:19:22.560 support a claim because again it always annoys me when people are like well I and all my friends
00:19:27.440 voted conservative so I can't see why the MVP would win the riding I was in it's like okay that doesn't
00:19:32.480 mean anything but if you have like people you know who didn't vote who like say that or like somebody
00:19:39.280 who went in to vote when they someone said a ballot's already been cast for you go call out that
00:19:44.240 call out any other way where votes were being collected on mass by a single person because
00:19:49.280 that's illegal all that sort of thing but this again annoys the heck out of me when you have
00:19:54.880 somebody come out and and they say like well this seems like denialism how do you know aren't you
00:20:00.720 supposed to actually care about evidence but you're just here to say oh you're a denier and that's what
00:20:05.440 the media was doing during the questioning period some people were asking good questions other people were
00:20:11.760 doing the whole well isn't this kind of like denialism isn't this going to make people question the
00:20:16.720 voting process guys ask how wanting integrity is not a problem this is a pretty close riding I'd hope
00:20:26.400 that we'd all care about it in fact there was a riding in the last provincial election that had to be
00:20:31.600 overturned through uh like uh through a judicial uh vote count like like through like um a judicial
00:20:39.920 recount because some of the votes were not counted properly or the votes were not like were not real
00:20:45.920 like there was not a real ballot and they had to be destroyed that happens and so I think we should
00:20:52.000 all wait and see what happens here and we should try and make sure that members of the public who know
00:20:57.040 something are able to come forward and say something because again it actually does matter for the
00:21:01.600 governance of British Columbia and I'll just add the cherry on top that it would be nice if the NDP
00:21:07.040 had less power in this government because they are already screwing things up big time their tax revenues
00:21:14.000 in this last fiscal year did not come in the way they thought they were and so they're about to run a
00:21:19.040 massive deficit in 2025 by the way there's only going to be 20 67 sitting days in the legislature this year
00:21:27.040 which allows for the BCNDP to stifle their opposition because there's only so many days a year out of the
00:21:33.920 days that the legislature sits that the opposition gets to forward their own legislative proposals their
00:21:39.920 own bills their own petitions and all this stuff and when there's only 67 days they're maybe going to
00:21:45.520 get like 18 days maybe 20 days to actually do their own business you want as many sitting days as
00:21:52.400 possible by the way 67 days means these people are working like part part-time they're not even
00:21:57.760 working part-time and while yes MLAs work the rest of the year in their own constituency meeting with
00:22:04.080 their constituents and doing other work research and all that the problem is is that now they're stifled
00:22:10.080 and how they present that officially in the legislature where most business can actually be done like
00:22:17.280 fully rather than just sort of doing background work when you present stuff in the legislature there is
00:22:22.240 a little bit more oomph to it than just having to film videos in your office being able to present
00:22:26.800 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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00:23:14.640 you