To the editor:
Charlie Hodge’s column (Hodge: Looking Ahead to Kelowna Municipal Election, posted March 20 to www.kelownacapnews.com Opinions) suggests some election procedures or technical glitch affected the tally of votes during the 2011 municipal election. Your readers should know that election results were audited after the election and no irregularities were found.
All of the polling station books were audited over a three-week period after the election by representatives of an unsuccessful candidate for office. There was no subsequent application to the City, or to the courts, for a recount, or a challenge to the election due to improper process.
The Office of the City Clerk also did its own audit of the voting books using a statistically valid sample from each voting location and found no incidence of improper voting.
Speculative musings of newspaper columnists usually do not merit comment from the City of Kelowna. In this case, however, it was felt the comment could not go unanswered since it cast aspersions on the integrity of the city’s voting process.
Tom Wilson,
communications supervisor,
City of Kelowna
