Election result challenge in federal court today

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Jun 28, 2010
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Election result challenge in federal court today

The Federal Court of Canada is hearing a motion to dismiss a challenge to the 2011 election results in seven ridings.

The applicants, backed by the Council of Canadians, want the Federal Court to overturn the results because of allegations of misleading phone calls that attempted to send voters to the wrong polling stations.

The Conservative Party of Canada argued Monday that the applicants haven't presented any evidence that people didn't vote as a result of the phone calls, and contended the case has no chance of success.

Conservative Party lawyer Arthur Hamilton told the court Monday morning that the applications are frivolous and vexatious, "deficiently thin" and fatally flawed.

Citing case law, Hamilton argued that voting irregularities must exceed the winning candidate's plurality in order for results to be thrown out, and he added that the onus of proof is on the applicants.

There is nothing in the applications to show widespread voter suppression within the individual ridings being challenged, Hamilton said.

"All we are stuck with is the personal stories of the applicants and that is not good enough," he said.
Hamilton also argued the applicants didn't file in time, arguing a 30-day time limit on applications started from the moment they got the phone calls.

Fraud not suspected until media reports: lawyer


A lawyer for the voters who brought the challenge say the clock didn't start until news broke of the misleading calls last February.

Garry Neil, head of the Council of Canadians, says the deadline for the challenge has to fall after the media reports began.

"Not only is it when you become aware, it's when you become aware of the fraudulent activity that affected the outcome of the election," he said.

The people who filed the challenges initially thought the calls were bureaucratic mix-ups of some kind and didn't suspect they affected the election result until months later, when they started seeing news reports of more widespread calls, Neil said.

He argued the bar should be low to prove voter suppression and have the election results overturned, despite the risk of disenfranchising voters who successfully cast their ballots.

"We have here an unprecedented case. We're not talking about clerical irregularities. We're talking about a campaign of fraudulent calls to Canadians which had the impact of suppressing the vote. And we think the bar should be set pretty low for [proving] that."

"As the prothonotary [chief clerk of the court] noted, how do you assess the impact of not voting? That's a different test."

The hearing, which got underway at 9:30 a.m. ET, continues after a break for lunch.

Election result challenge in federal court today - Politics - CBC News