Elections N.L. says candidate attempted to 'intercept' ballots at post office

Elections N.L. says a political candidate in Humber-Bay of Islands attempted to intercept special ballot kits at a post office during the last provincial election.

The allegations from Elections N.L. appear in two sentencesthe 374-pagegeneral election report released last November.

"Elections N.L. is also aware of an instance of one candidate attempting to intercept special ballot kits at a Canada Post outlet in one community. Canada Post alerted Elections N.L. of the candidate's activities and corrective action was taken at the outlet to prevent further interference by the candidate," reads a section of the report labelled "Political Involvement with Special Ballot Process."

Elections N.L. won't identify the candidate in question.In an email, spokesperson Rexanne Eddy said"no ballots were actually intercepted" and there were no consequences for the candidate. Police were not called, she said.

"Canada Post followed their processes for the delivery of mail, which would not permit the mail to be given to anyone other than the addressee," Eddy wrote.

Disbelief from candidates

All three candidates in the district deny knowing anything about the "interference" alleged to have occurred March 4, as a problem-plagued campaign forced thousands of people across the province to vote by mail.

In fact, Independent MHAEddie Joyce, Liberal candidate Stelman Flynn and PC candidate Robert Marche said they had no knowledge of the allegations until CBC News contacted them on Thursday.

"This is the first time I ever heard of anything like this. We were never notified of any incident whatsoever, never even notified," said Joyce.

When CBC News asked Elections N.L. to clarify the allegations, we were told to file an access-to-information request. Chief electoral officerBruce Chaulk declined an interview, as did Canada Post spokesperson Philipe Legault.

Contact between Canada Post and Joycestaffer

Joyce said his campaign staff spoke to a Canada Post employee on March 4, but only because the postmaster wanted to flag the dozens of wrongly addressed special ballot kits arriving at their post office.

"Canada Post notified us and said, 'Look, we got ballots that are being returned from the north shore of the Bay of Islands and the reason why they were being returned is because the wrong address was put on by Elections N.L.,'" Joyce said.

Emails between Joyce's constituency assistant, Judy Bolt, and Elections N.L. show she informed the agency on March 4 that a number of special ballot kitshad been sent to the wrong address.

"I just received a call from a constituent who also works at the post office advising that 34 ballot kits have been returned to Canada Post because Elections Canada or your office, whoever is looking after this, has put the voters' old addresses on the ballot kits,"Bolt wrote to Chaulk.

"Instead of their civic addresses, for some reason, staff usedold P.O. box numbers which haven't been used for at least five years. These people will not get their ballots as it is in the return to sender bin at Canada Post. This has to be addressed by your office ASAP and arrangements have to be made with Canada Post for pickup."

Five minutes later, Chaulk replied and promised tocontact Canada Post and "get this corrected." A subsequent email from the same day shows Elections N.L. said it wouldsendout new special ballot kits with updated addresses.

Election roller-coaster

At the time, thousands ofvoters feared their mail-in ballots wouldn't arrive at Elections N.L. headquarters in time. On Feb. 12, the night before polling daywas supposed to occur, Chaulk cancelled in-person voting whena COVID-19 outbreakstruck the province. As a result, more than 100,000 voters had to order special ballot kits at the last minute.

The deadline to receive votes by mail at Elections N.L. headquarters was pushed back several times, but the voter participation rate was still the lowest in the province's history. In the province's most isolated district, Torngat Mountains, just 22 per cent of eligible voters cast aballot.

Joyce, a former Liberal minister and longtime MHA,won the election in Humber-Bay of Islands handilywith 71.6 per cent of the 4,264 votes cast.

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