March 3, 2003

Inflated Recall Costs or Massive Waste?

In the infamous "New Era Document" Gordon Campbell promised to "Establish workable recall legislation, to make it easier for citizens to hold MLAs accountable." These days that promise is often recited without the all important clause "to make it easier". In his criticisms of the Delta South recall campaign, it looks like the Premier is trying to lay the groundwork to add further restrictions on recall.

The Delta South recall campaign deserves criticism. It almost looks like the campaign was designed to be mischievous rather than being a serious effort to collect legitimate signatures. The proponents claimed that they didn't have enough staff to check signatures against the voters list. Collecting signatures that are not on the list is not only a waste of time, but is a violation of the Act and subject to penalties. Canvassers in recall campaigns, even more so than canvassers in election campaigns, must check names against the voters list.

It is a waste of scare resources, taxpayers' money, to ask Elections BC to verify a petition with a substantial number of invalid signatures. The major error in the Delta South petition was not fraudulent signatures, it was signatures by people who were not on the list. So many people signed who were not on the list that removal of just those names would have been sufficient to invalidate the petition. It is a simple matter to go through the petitions and check the names against the list. Computers make the process very quick since a name can be typed in and any match rapidly appears on the screen. It is inconceivable that it would cost more than one or two thousand dollars to perform that simple test. Claims that in excess of $100,000 was wasted on checking the petition should not be taken as a criticism of even a badly conducted recall campaign. If that amount was spent, it illustrates massive waste and inefficiencies that warrant an investigation by the Auditor General. We can only hope that costs are not being exaggerated so as to assist Premier Campbell in a plan to amend the Recall Act and discourage its use.

Whether any particular recall campaign is fair or not is something that must be left in the hands of the voters. So far voters have shown that they think it is an abuse of the process to use recall to fight a government on policy issues. The only time it was used in reaction to individual misbehaviour, the MLA resigned before the petition was returned. Premier Campbell needs to be reminded that his promise had two parts, to make the process workable and to make it easier. "Total Recall" organizer Kevin Falcon might be able to offer the Premier some suggests on how to make his promised changes.