The RCMP is investigating allegations that seven canvassers who gathered names for British Columbia's anti-HST petition last spring accepted multiple signatures from the same voters, the province's acting chief electoral officer said Monday.
Craig James said Elections BC discovered 2,250 incidents of people signing the petition more than once, including 38 people who signed the petition three times or more.
Despite the duplicate signatures, James said the petition garnered the required 10 per cent of registered voters in every one of the province's ridings and remains valid. The referendum on the future of the HST will go ahead as scheduled on Sept. 24, 2011.
Anyone who signed the petition more than once has been sent a "reprimanding" letter for Elections BC, said James, and a handful of cases were forwarded to the Mounties.
"There were 10 canvassers who breached their duties under the (Recall and Initiative) Act," said James.
"Three of them have received, again, stern warnings from me. Seven of the canvassers in question have been referred to the RCMP for further investigation."
Violations of the Recall and Initiative Act include maximum fines of $10,000 and a maximum jail terms of two years, or both.
The revelations came as James released his report on the petition campaign, outlining how the agency verified signatures, the results and the campaign's financing.
The anti-HST campaign was led by former premier Bill Vander Zalm, who used British Columbia's unique direct democracy laws that allow voters to force issues on the legislature. Under the Recall and Initiative Act, such campaigns have 90 days to collect the valid signatures of 10 per cent of registered voters in each of the province's 85 ridings.
If that happens, the government must either hold a vote in the legislature or call a non-binding referendum. In this case, the Liberals decided to send the issue to a referendum, promising to respect the wishes of a simple majority of votes cast.
The report says Elections BC verified the signatures of 557,383 people who signed the petition. It rejected 156,500 signatures. There were 6,556 registered canvassers.
Despite the possible breaches, James said the petition process was "validated" and the referendum can go ahead. He said Elections BC workers and their computer-checking system were able to catch the problems.
"I am determined as the acting chief electoral officer to maintain the integrity of the office of the Election Act, the Referendum Act, the Recall and Initiative Act, and I will not allow any election event to be subverted," he told reporters.
James said he expects to submit the wording for next September's referendum question to Attorney General Mike de Jong on Wednesday. De Jong has said he will release the question to the public shortly after he receives it.
The question will be debated in the legislature early next year, but James has the final say on the wording.
Chris Delaney, one of the organizers of the petition campaign, claimed Elections BC's decision to call in the Mounties was politically motivated and was aimed at disrupting plans to mount recall campaigns of Liberal politicians.
"They've known for two-and-a-half months now what the verification count was and where there were extra signatures written or any other discrepancies or clerical errors that could have been made, and now, suddenly, on the eve of recalls they're prosecuting and charging citizens, little old ladies and people who went around trying to gather signatures from their neighbours?" said Delaney.
"This is unbelievable."
Delaney said the number of duplicate signatures is insignificant in the face of a petition that collected 700,000 names, citing the number of submitted signatures before more than 150,000 were thrown out.
"The suggestion here by Elections BC is that canvassers somehow deliberately signed people up twice, which would be ridiculous anyway since they knew it was going to be verified and that they'd be struck off the list," said Delaney. "So this is clearly political."
James strongly denied Delaney's accusations.
"Elections BC is non-partisan," he said. "It has been a-political and is not bending to any political pressure."
The province's solicitor general, Rich Coleman, said he had concerns about the petition process. He said he heard of an instance in which people from California signed the document.
New Democrat finance critic Bruce Ralston said allegations of padding signatures should be investigated.
Ralston said he helped collect signatures last spring, and he said the process worked on an honour system, where people were asked if they had already signed the petition before signing.
The report said Elections BC spent $1.1 million on the petition, while Vander Zalm's team, which had an expense limit of $921,448, spent just under $109,000.
According to figures included in the report, 18.6 per cent of registered B.C. voters signed the petition.
The riding that met the threshold by the slimmest margin was Abbotsford South, where the number of verified signatures was just 599 above the required 10 per cent of registered voters.
The widest petition margin was in Kootenay West, where signatures blew past the threshold by 7,574 votes. The petition needed 3,066 signatures in that riding, but received 10,640.
The ridings with the greatest proportion of rejected signatures, where more than 30 per cent of the submitted signatures were thrown out, were: Peace River North, Vancouver-Mount Pleasant, Victoria-Beacon Hill, Surrey-Newton, North Coast, Vancouver-Kingsway and Fraser-Nicola.
