The NDP is asking the Supreme Court to void all provincial election results and immediately order a new election to take place.
The new court filings expand on last week’s request for a recount in the district of St. John’s East-Quidi Vidi, where party leader Alison Coffin lost by 53 votes.
(NDP leader Alison Coffin files for a recount of the St. John’s East-Quidi Vidi results.)
Today’s application asks the court to throw out all of the results in the election and order a new one, citing a myriad of reasons to bolster their case—many of them linked to the COVID outbreak in early February.
It claims the irregularities and errors were largely due to the conduct of Chief Electoral Officer Bruce Chaulk and his staff, and that voters were discriminated against on the basis of ethnicity, age, disability, and geography—not to mention access to the Internet.
Apr 9, 2021 – “The Election Should Have Been Delayed” says Former Elections NL Worker
They say any one of those issues—such as no ballot translation for Indigenous voters—would be enough to void the election, but they say the sheer volume and severity of Charter violations demands that a new election be called as soon as possible.
There are also new allegations that staff took ballot kits home to work on, and that some voters printed their own ballots which were counted as valid.
The NDP application is back before the court Tuesday morning to deal with the recount in St. John’s East-Quidi Vidi.
