The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - October 26, 2024


BC Election deadlock - 66,000 ballots left to be counted!

Topics
telephone voting
Hosted by
Wyatt Claypool
Mentioned
Coquitlam-Burke Mountain Plantefuca Malahat Courtney Comox Surrey
Liberals are shielding 11 MP traitors while attacking Poilievre! BC election and how polls are conducted？ (ft. Quito Maggi)

Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

180.01

Word count

2,392

Sentence count

123

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

It's election day in British Columbia and there's a lot of mail-in ballots left to count. In this episode, I discuss which ridings are likely to have the most votes to count, and which ones are leaning towards the Conservatives. I also discuss the possibility of telephone voting, and whether or not it should be allowed.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 So last time we talked about the British Columbia provincial election, it was a day after election day and we still didn't know who was actually going to win the election because there were several ridings that were practically tied and we had a lot more mail-in ballots left to count.
00:00:18.660 Originally, our mail-in ballot number was 49,000. This includes both mail-in ballots as well as provisional ballots. Some people go directly to returning officers' offices and just writing up their ballot right there. That's totally fine, obviously, but that's a minority of the 49,000.
00:00:37.760 But since we reported that, now the amount of ballots that has to be counted has gone from 49,000 to 65,000. I believe it's actually 66,000 at the official count that was released yesterday.
00:00:51.280 It's nothing to be concerned about that the ballot number went up. Really, it's just that there are a lot of very rural areas in BC where ballots were being turned in, which were, in fact, picked up and postmarked on October 19th.
00:01:05.140 But obviously, if you pick up ballots in Haida Gwaii or somewhere else, it will take you a little while to be able to actually send them to a BC elections depot so that they can be counted.
00:01:18.240 The good thing is that the ballots are actually leaning towards the Conservatives.
00:01:22.340 But before I get to that number in terms of where the ballots are probably going to be leaning in terms of the vote count,
00:01:28.980 I just want to show you the ridings where there is high amounts of mail-in ballots and where they could actually make the difference.
00:01:35.720 Because there is totally a chance that the Conservatives either gain a minority government or a majority government.
00:01:41.760 In fact, I actually think it's probably a greater than 50% chance that the Conservatives flip at least one seat here,
00:01:48.280 considering one of them is currently tied and probably leaning a bit conservative.
00:01:52.240 But before I do that, I will say, hey, if you're not subscribed to this channel, please subscribe to the channel.
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00:02:17.200 And in almost three years, he hasn't actually presented any evidence we defamed him, and it still cost me $33,000.
00:02:24.700 Anyways, so the riding that really matters right here is Juan de Fuca, Malahat.
00:02:30.980 This is the closest riding in this provincial election.
00:02:34.760 It is within 20 votes.
00:02:36.640 I think it's 20 or 23, depending on which count you look at.
00:02:39.920 And there were 496 ballots here to count from the category of certification envelopes containing mail-in and assisted telephone votes.
00:02:51.760 The telephone votes are the things that are concerning to me, at least in the long run, in terms of politics.
00:02:57.440 I don't know how you administer a telephone vote, and I do hope that they counted how many were specifically telephone votes in a more detailed breakdown.
00:03:05.900 Because I think there is a very good legal case to say that telephone voting should not be real.
00:03:11.520 There's no way of verifying the person is actually the person who they say they are.
00:03:15.960 They could just take somebody else's ID in the household and vote for them.
00:03:19.780 There's no way of knowing.
00:03:21.380 I would like to see if there's recordings, voice recordings of the people voting.
00:03:25.140 Because it would be a bit odd if you, like, call up someone who is a woman and it's a man's voice saying,
00:03:29.960 yes, I'd like to vote for the BCNDP or whatever.
00:03:33.880 Could also go the other way, obviously.
00:03:36.240 But the problem is when elections are coming down to who has a bigger ground game team and the NDP had an $8 million advantage,
00:03:45.080 you're going to have a lot more activists willing to go out and find votes for the NDP than the conservatives.
00:03:51.400 But then there is another 185 votes that are certification envelopes containing special and absentee ballots.
00:03:57.600 That would be people going and voting maybe through the military or going and voting at offices directly.
00:04:06.200 Because, again, in a lot of rural areas, you have an electoral district office in your area, but not an advanced voting location.
00:04:11.780 But it effectively acts the same way.
00:04:14.460 So there are 681 votes left to count in Juan de Fuca, Malahat.
00:04:19.920 There's a few other places that are going to matter a lot.
00:04:22.200 Courtney Comox is.
00:04:24.160 That's actually an area where the conservatives are leading by about 186 votes or so.
00:04:28.420 But there are 996 votes left to count.
00:04:31.960 So that white might be a nail-biter, too, and a potential flip for the NDP. 0.96
00:04:37.120 But another place that matters a lot is, if I can find it, it's always sometimes hard to find right away.
00:04:45.380 It's on the next page.
00:04:46.960 Coquitlam Burke Mountain.
00:04:48.740 The NDP lead this riding by around 208 votes or something like that, 227 votes.
00:04:56.360 There are 711 votes left to count.
00:04:59.120 And even though that is a bigger gap to overcome than in other ridings,
00:05:03.720 the good thing is that it has such a massive rural area after the Coquitlam area in the Burke Mountain side of that riding
00:05:11.440 that I'm actually pretty hopeful that a lot of those votes will be coming for the conservative
00:05:16.580 simply because they are coming from remote areas where obviously people who work in farming and, you know,
00:05:23.580 farming and trades tend to vote conservative heavily.
00:05:26.760 But the other one that's actually extremely close,
00:05:29.920 the second closest riding in the entire election is Surrey City Center.
00:05:34.500 And there are a total of 476 votes left to count, definitely on the lower end of the mail-in votes.
00:05:42.920 But the NDP in that riding only leads by 96 votes.
00:05:48.080 And so, yes, the conservative would have to win the next mail-in tranches by a large margin
00:05:53.820 in order to come up, be over to overcome that gap.
00:05:57.240 But considering the fact that we had Surrey as a kind of a late-breaking type of a big surge area for the conservatives,
00:06:05.420 it could happen.
00:06:06.540 But again, mostly just comes down to Juan de Fuca Malahat.
00:06:10.080 And the reason I'm generally pretty confident that we will be able to at least grab one of these ridings,
00:06:15.460 and we're probably not going to have any of the conservative ridings flip,
00:06:18.640 is that this was the last poll that Main Street conducted,
00:06:23.340 Main Street Research conducted, of 2,064 people.
00:06:27.260 And they were asking people their likelihood to vote.
00:06:29.780 And certain to vote category, this was people who had not yet voted,
00:06:33.940 and they were saying whether or not they want to show up.
00:06:35.980 So the conservatives led that by a little bit.
00:06:37.660 The NDP are a bit behind.
00:06:39.520 But this was, because it was the last poll,
00:06:41.380 obviously a lot of people had already voted in advance.
00:06:45.280 And so the NDP always had a slight lead over early voting, advanced polls.
00:06:52.060 It depended on the day.
00:06:53.000 Sometimes the conservatives could lead the NDP.
00:06:55.340 It depended, usually the NDP led by a couple of points.
00:06:59.000 But on voted by mail, oddly enough,
00:07:02.100 despite many people having a bias towards the idea
00:07:04.540 that the people voting by mail would be more likely to be NDP,
00:07:08.740 the conservatives actually led in this poll 47.3 to 39%.
00:07:13.600 I've seen it a little bit lower than that.
00:07:15.860 I've seen it much higher than that.
00:07:17.920 And if that holds, with Plantefuca Malahat,
00:07:22.240 the conservatives would quite easily win that riding.
00:07:25.100 On top of that, Plantefuca Malahat, if you know the riding,
00:07:28.820 is on the southern tip of Vancouver Island.
00:07:31.620 There's a lot of rural area, and there is a naval base near that area.
00:07:35.600 And despite the naval base not being directly in the riding,
00:07:39.360 most sailors who own homes on Vancouver Island live in towns like Souk outside of Victoria
00:07:46.260 rather than paying for extremely expensive Victoria real estate.
00:07:50.340 And from the people in the Navy I've talked to since this theory about the Navy playing a big role
00:07:56.440 in this riding potentially, a lot of them have said,
00:07:59.080 oh yeah, every single person I know in the Navy voted for the conservatives.
00:08:02.280 So if we can get this one extra riding, it at least becomes a 46-45 scenario with the conservatives and the NDP.
00:08:11.500 Yes, there are two green MLAs, and they could technically just throw this thing over to the NDP still.
00:08:18.280 But I think that at least the conservatives leading a minority government would probably ensure,
00:08:23.560 or even if the NDP had to form a coalition,
00:08:26.220 it'd probably ensure that we're going to have another election in at least one year's time or so,
00:08:31.100 because nobody is going to want to govern in this very tight manner.
00:08:34.660 And at that point, it will be a much, much easier election for the BC conservatives to win,
00:08:40.620 because they get the actual taxpayer funding that the Greens and the NDP had.
00:08:44.880 Remember that in the last election, there was a rule that you got $2 or about,
00:08:50.720 I think it's like $187 per vote you got in the last election given to you every single year.
00:08:56.600 The conservatives only got 2% of the vote, so obviously they didn't get that much money.
00:09:02.220 And on top of that, there was a rule that if you could score more than 10% of the vote in any given riding,
00:09:08.380 you were given back 50% of your campaign spending funds.
00:09:13.160 So going into this election, the conservatives only had about $200,000 from taxpayers,
00:09:18.600 and I think we should just get rid of these rules, just have legitimate ways of actually fundraising publicly,
00:09:25.700 because the problem right now is that you can only donate $1,400, which I know that's a lot for an average person,
00:09:31.800 but it means that there's really no such thing as a very big donor.
00:09:35.100 Other provinces, you can donate $3,000, $4,000.
00:09:38.360 I know federally, it's still only $1,700, but at least federally, you have a far wider net to cast,
00:09:44.420 whereas in BC, there's not that many people who are going to max at a donation.
00:09:48.160 And then if you can't get like 1,000 people to max you at a donation,
00:09:52.360 it's going to be very difficult to actually be able to fundraise for a provincial-wide election campaign.
00:09:58.860 So the conservatives ended up having $200,000 taxpayer dollars, and the BC NDP had $8 million.
00:10:05.580 So they had a $7.8 million advantage.
00:10:08.340 The BC Greens had far more money than the BC Conservatives had,
00:10:12.560 because they had like 18% of the vote last election, or maybe like 15% or so,
00:10:16.720 and then they won a few ridings, and they were above 10% in several of them.
00:10:21.380 So even the Greens were better funded than the conservatives,
00:10:24.580 and the BC NDP have still basically lost this election.
00:10:28.680 Even if they pulled a majority, it's not really a win,
00:10:31.040 but if the Conservatives grab up one more riding, they effectively won the election,
00:10:34.520 and they did it with $5 and a ham sandwich.
00:10:36.940 Which, ugh, it's so annoying to then see people in the aftermath saying,
00:10:40.980 oh, well, if this or that didn't happen, it would have been a BC NDP wipeout.
00:10:44.940 You guys were already given every advantage you could get.
00:10:47.860 And then I was hearing people like whining about, 1.00
00:10:50.860 well, if the NDP or if there wasn't this stupid rule, 0.99
00:10:54.460 or if theirs wasn't this like instance or whatever, 0.99
00:10:58.320 you know, if the mainstream media commented more on the crazy candidates
00:11:04.080 the Conservatives were running, then the BC NDP would have won.
00:11:06.940 Okay, sure, guys, sure.
00:11:09.600 Everyone thinks that they're, like, even though I, throughout the entire election,
00:11:13.100 I never saw any of those stories smearing conservative candidates
00:11:16.040 actually move the needle.
00:11:18.020 People really didn't care.
00:11:19.600 Because most people mostly care about their taxes, crime,
00:11:23.160 their kids, and a few other issues.
00:11:25.660 And it never really runs into,
00:11:28.300 oh, I care that someone made a joke five years ago on Twitter.
00:11:32.120 Anyways, so that should be it for me today, guys.
00:11:34.900 I'm going to come back with another update later.
00:11:37.400 Based on the way that the 66,000 votes split,
00:11:40.680 I think there is a very good chance that the Conservatives can win.
00:11:44.300 But never say never.
00:11:46.620 And I think that some of these ridings probably will just end up in court
00:11:50.260 because of things like telephone voting if they stay extremely close.
00:11:54.200 Who could really say that they won if it's only separated by, like, 50 votes
00:11:58.360 and, like, 300 people voted by telephone?
00:12:00.880 And we have no way of actually knowing if they wanted to vote that way.
00:12:05.420 Or it's just simply people being called up and asked if they want to vote.
00:12:09.560 I heard that that was a thing, that people were being called and told,
00:12:13.340 you haven't voted yet.
00:12:14.380 Would you like to vote?
00:12:15.560 And you're like, you're not supposed to reach out and call somebody.
00:12:18.560 They can go find out if there's a way of voting by telephone
00:12:21.240 or send out notifications.
00:12:22.840 If you're telling people and texting people, you can vote by telephone.
00:12:26.520 That's not real.
00:12:27.800 That's now soliciting votes, especially depending on how you do it.
00:12:31.800 It might be completely, like, out of whack with, like, thinking about it this way.
00:12:36.980 BC elections is far more likely to have NDP voters' data
00:12:40.940 than BC conservative people's data
00:12:43.020 because BC conservative voters are uniquely, disproportionately new voters
00:12:48.380 because they haven't voted in past elections
00:12:50.260 because the options were BC liberals or BC NDP.
00:12:54.860 Mini rant right there about telephone voting.
00:12:57.760 It really should just be maybe one or two days of voting.
00:13:00.160 There should be one advance poll day
00:13:01.760 and there should be one day on election day to vote.
00:13:04.860 And that's it.
00:13:05.400 And I think those two days should be pretty close together
00:13:07.540 because I don't like this idea that someone's voting 15 days
00:13:10.520 before the actual election has fully wrapped up.
00:13:14.280 Anyways, okay, that's it for me.
00:13:16.640 See you guys later.