Newfoundland election

 The polls have closed in the NL election... sort of. 

As of 8pm local (IE the time this post goes live) the post offices in Newfoundland and Labrador close for regular business. As ballots must be received (or, if the rules changed, postmarked, by today) this means the "polls" have "closed". One could argue, "perhaps midnight is better", but, my point here is that we have no results.

And we will continue to have no results until noon on Saturday (40 hours from now)

To my knowledge, this is the first time in 100 years that a Canadian election is having its results held back, despite the fact that no one can vote as the polls have closed. This just "does not happen" here. In places like Ireland or the UK it is far more normal to wait until all results are counted to release the results. That, however, is not part of our political culture as Canadians. 

Remember that the original election date was February 13th. We are now 40 days out from that mark. Results are still 2 days away. The move to the 27th (as results day) marks the 5th change, after it was changed to the 1st, then the 5th, the 12th, the 25th, and finally to the 27th. 

Beyond that, 20 people are counting the ballots, when roughly 2400 people would normally do so in the province. 

Beyond that, the election itself was cancelled with under 24 hours notice. At the time of its cancelation, anyone with covid would have been barred from voting. 

Apparently, despite having been in a pandemic for 10 months, none of the members of the minority legislature thought it wise to update the election act to ensure that there would be procedures to deal with the situation. 

The opposition parties are demanding meetings with election officials, but are being refused. Only the government party, it seems, gets to bypass this by having its leader as sitting Premier. 

If it was not for the fact that polls agreed that the government would be re-elected easily, a liberal victory would likely have lead to a massive constitutional crisis in the country. 

In short, the management of this election has been offensive. 

Reports that some voters were told to vote illegally are perhaps the icing on the cake.

This election has been run with extreme incompetence. Only the lack of malice makes any of this in any way acceptable in Canada. 

We should not be relying on the goodness of our officials to ensure a healthy democracy. Things need to change. Now. 

After debating with myself for weeks on if I want to associate myself with this farce by covering the results, I've decided that I will, for the same reason outlined above - lack of malice on the part of the administrators of the election. As such, expect a short post on Saturday with the results.