B.C. Conservative leader alleges voting irregularities in critical Surrey-Guildford riding

John Rustad, the leader of the B.C. Conservative Party, says his party has uncovered what he calls voting irregularities in the critical Surrey-Guildford riding – where the margin of victory was just 22, and which gave the provincial New Democratic Party its majority.

Rustad says his party has been digging into many reports of issues that came up during the fall election. He says his party has found what he calls a number of irregularities in the election.

"Part of that is how voting happened in seniors facilities, part of that is people who may not have lived in the riding, part of that is people who voted twice, and there's other components as well, so there’s still a lot of things that we’re looking into," Rustad said. "For example, we’ve had lots of reports of people who are not Canadian citizens (who) voted in this election, people who are not Canadian citizens who received an invitation from Elections BC to vote.”

“There’s care facilities where some people had not even requested mail-in ballots, yet were asked to fill out ballots – in some cases didn’t now what it was for, or who they were voting for,” Rustad told CTV News, when asked about the nature of the concerns at care facilities.

He says the party will provide affidavits regarding the alleged irregularities in seniors homes.

“I think what’s disturbing about that is that we’re hearing reports of senior facilities in other ridings as well, where similar things have gone on, but we need to investigate that more before we can come out with more details,” he added.

Rustad said Wednesday that his team is doing further investigation into the alleged irregularities.

“And so there’s a lot of things that we need to look at; there’s more research that we need to do,” he said.

He said his party is reiterating calls for an independent review of Elections BC, ideally conducted by retired judges.

Rustad alleges his party has uncovered more than 22 irregularities – Begg's margin of victory – in the Surrey-Guildford riding.

Rustad also said consideration is being given to some form of court challenge of the results in that riding, won by a narrow margin by Garry Begg.

Rustad and the B.C. Conservative candidate in the riding, Honveer Singh Randhawa, will be holding a news conference at the B.C. legislature on Thursday, at which they say they will provide evidence of the alleged irregularities.