Your vote deserves better than this.

On Saturday, October 17, the last round of neighbours voted for a new mayor and council. Based on the preliminary results, four of the six council candidates we chose were elected: Stephen Hammond, who topped the poll, Marg Gardiner, Melissa Cseszko and Wendy Bowkett. We selected the candidates because they are the best in making sure your voice counts in city governance, and because they are best equipped to put Victoria on a path of sustainable prosperity for the current and future generations. Thank you to everyone who voted and took part in this basic act of civic democracy, and everyone who got their neighbours and friends to cast their vote.

The election itself was run badly, and the people who run City Hall owe Victoria an answer for it. The City of Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, was the only municipality in the province where this issue occurred. The City administration needs to right the wrongs before all is said and done, so that our democracy and the values it is built on are not dealt a fatal blow.

What happened according to the city employees

More than 3,400 Victorians asked for a mail ballot. On Friday, October 9, the City found out that about 2,300 of those packages, 62%, had been sitting in a Canada Post warehouse for up to five business days. Canada Post says the mailing service the City chose needed a form, and the form had never been filed. The City says nobody told it. Saanich and Esquimalt, asked by CTV the same week, said their mail ballots went out without trouble.

The City told voters on Tuesday, October 13, the day after Thanksgiving and four days before the election. It told them to keep the ballot out of the mail and bring it in by hand, or to vote in person. People ask for a mail ballot because getting to a voting place is hard for them. By Saturday, City staff were driving to people's homes to collect ballots.

2,007 mail ballots were counted. In 2022 it was 2,685. Something like 1,400 people who asked for a ballot are missing from the mail count, and the City has not said how many of them voted another way.

On election day the internet went down at several voting places. Most were fixed by mid-morning. James Bay Community School was still slow by mid-afternoon, with the line out on the sidewalk, so the City told people to go to Crystal Garden instead and laid on a bus. Voters were also moved out of the line at Sir James Douglas school. The City has not said how many people gave up and went home.

Fifteen votes decided the last council seat: Dave Thompson 13,103, Krista Loughton 13,088. Arthur McInnis was 172 behind. For CRD director, five votes separated third place from fourth.

The missing ballots and the 15-vote seat

The mail ballots leaned hard toward our six. Of the 2,007 that were counted, every one of the six candidates we backed outpolled every member of the Gang of 5. Arthur McInnis had 1,099 of those ballots. Dave Thompson had 747. At James Bay, the voting place where the trouble lasted longest, each of our six again outpolled each of the Gang of 5.

Nobody knows whether the missing ballots would have changed the result, and nobody will know until the City accounts for every one of them.

What our scrutineers saw

Our scrutineers have observed numerous violations of election rules and regulations. They have witnessed poor execution and concerningly lax enforcement in several cases. We saw Matt Dell loitering in the staircase at Crystal Garden, the advance voting place, on Wednesday. We saw a candidate backed by the Gang of 5, Bella Lee, violating election law: on Wednesday evening a lit-up vehicle carrying her election advertising circled the entrance of Crystal Garden while advance voting was on, inside the 100 metres the law keeps clear. Stephen Andrew shared the video, and the incident was reported to Victoria Police. On Saturday, we saw terrible inefficiency in several key polling stations that slowed down the speed of voting unacceptably and caused long lines that make voting prohibitive for anybody with mobility issues, and that feel punitive and demoralizing for senior citizens and families with children. We saw voters taking 15 and 30 minutes in a voting booth to make their choice while scrolling through their smartphones, making the queues outside even longer as a consequence. And that was just the warmup before the real problems started in James Bay and in Fairfield (and Gonzales), the two neighbourhoods with the highest level of support for candidates intent on giving people their voice back.

The Act forbids canvassing, posting advertising, showing a marked ballot or wearing a candidate's badge within 100 metres of a place where voting is going on. On voting day it allows only what was already up: signs, posters, pamphlets and websites left unchanged. We are collecting these reports with places and times and passing them to the chief election officer and to Elections BC.

What we think

Council appoints the chief election officer and approves the budget he works with. Under the Local Government Act, council answers for how the vote is run.

We think the disregard this council has shown for residents' voices over four years is what ran this election. This council adopted a new plan for every street in the city on a survey of 1,457 responses. It did away with public hearings. It explained decisions after it made them. The record is on this website, every item with its source. Then came the vote. The mail went out without the paperwork, voters heard about it four days before election day, and at the busiest voting places the internet failed and the answer was a bus.

What we are asking for

1. A full public accounting of the mail ballots before the official results are declared, which the law says must happen by 4 p.m. on Wednesday, October 21: how many packages were sent and on which days, how many came back and were accepted, how many arrived after 8 p.m., how many applicants voted another way, and how many did not vote at all. Our Fernwood has put the same five questions to the City, and we join them.
2. The chief election officer's report to council, due within 30 days, to include the letters and emails with Canada Post, the mailing dates and counts, and the voting-place outage logs: what failed, where, for how long, and how many voters were sent elsewhere.
3. A review of how this election was run, by someone outside City Hall. Nobody at the Province oversees how a city runs its own election. Council should ask the Province for a review.
4. Council to deal with all of this in public at its first meeting.

Arthur McInnis has asked the Victoria Police to see that the City's, Canada Post's and SD61's records are kept. We support that. Nothing should be deleted until the questions are answered.

What you can do

• Tell us what happened to you, below. If you asked for a mail ballot and did not get it in time, or you were sent away or sent elsewhere on election day, we want to hear from you. Keep your envelope.
• Tell the City too: elections@victoria.ca (the email is drafted for you; fill in the brackets), and call them at 250-361-0571. Give them the date, the place and what happened.
• If you saw canvassing, signs or a candidate's badge within 100 metres of a voting place, or any new election advertising on October 17, report it to Elections BC and the chief election officer: investigations@elections.bc.ca (the email is drafted for you, with the City copied), or call 1-800-661-8683. Give them the place and the time, and a photo if you have one.
• Print a sign for your window, your door or your fence: six slogans, one page each.
• Sign up. We will tell you what the City answers, and what comes next.