Elections BC is looking into a complaint of voting irregularities in the riding of Surrey-Guildford, where a narrow NDP win gave it a one-seat majority in the 2024 election.
Allegations lodged by BC Conservative Leader John Rustad include improper voting at a licenced addiction recovery lodge in the riding of Surrey-Guildford, where the party claims 45 dubious votes were cast.
BC Conservative candidate Honveer Singh Randhawa lost the riding by 22 votes. The Conservatives claim 21 mail-in ballot votes cast by residents of Argyll Lodge, which is across the street from a polling station, were influenced by a third party.
“We have three people who have confirmed from this lodge that they were voted in a certain way which you can see that was not as per their will,” Randhawa alleged on Jan. 9.
The BC Conservative party also points to an apparent $1,400 donation to the BC NDP in 2023 by the facility’s manager, Baljit Kandola.
Kandola told Global News Friday that Fraser Health had advised her to direct any media inquiries to them.
Fraser Health directed questions to Elections BC.
“There’s no truth to the matter,” Kandola told Global News.
“And I’m here I’m trying to do my job. I have 25 people to take care of.”
Speaking on CKNW’s The Jas Johal Show, UBC political scientist Max Cameron said some of the allegations were “very significant,” but were presented without “a lot of solid evidence.”
“There are stories, there are rumours, there are suggestions, but its hard to know whether these claims amount to something serious,” he said.
“What’s puzzling to me is having laid out a series of complaints without any real evidence to back them up, Rustad then says we need an investigative committee to look at this rather than Elections BC … they’re the independent electoral authority,” he said.
“I don’t understand how you can make such vague allegations and then dismiss the relevant authority and go to something that really looks like it is an attempt to politicize the issue.”
Elections BC Chief Electoral Officer Anton Boegman said on Jan. 9 he stands by the electoral process.
“I’m fully confident that the election was held in accordance with the Election Act and there’s many processes in place to protect elections’ integrity,” he said.
The BC conservatives are calling for an independent inquiry.
Elections BC says it will conduct its own review.