In tight race, every vote will count
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/09/2011 (5363 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
She has been a ghostly presence for her entire election campaign, if we can call it that. She never once deigned to speak a single word to media and maintained such a low profile we’re not even sure she knocked on the door of a single Brandon home.
Essentially, she has been a candidate in name only. And now, even that is gone — except on the ballot, where it doesn’t belong.
Perennial Communist Party candidate Lisa Gallagher has left the race for Brandon West just as quietly as she entered it.
As the Sun reported today, Gallagher is the only one of Manitoba’s 209 provincial election candidates so far to withdraw ahead of next Tuesday’s election, and the only person in three of the last provincial elections to do so.
Without any explanation, Gallagher leaves the race barely two weeks into her official campaign — she entered the race just before the Sept. 13 nomination deadline — and three days after advance poll locations have been open for Brandon West voters.
But all candidates have the right to quit without penalty up to the day before the Oct. 4 election, and because she has quit the race after the advanced polls have opened, Elections Manitoba cannot print replacement ballots.
Meaning that any Brandon West voter who enters the voting booth will see Gallagher’s name on the ballot.
As Gallagher only received 43 votes in the 2007 provincial election in Brandon West, we find it unlikely that she received many ballots in her favour since Saturday.
However, much like the 2007 election in which Progressive Conservative candidate Rick Borotsik squeaked by NDP candidate Scott Smith by all of 56 votes, the 2011 race has been deemed very tight between Tory Reg Helwer and New Democrat Jim Murray.
Yes, comrade, that means every vote counts.
So if Brandon West voters have wasted their ballot on the Communist Party candidate, instead of the next closest party — the NDP — Gallagher may have unwittingly helped a Tory once again claim the constituency.