Recall Legislation

Recall and Initiative Act [RSBC 1996] CHAPTER 398

Robert A. Patterson
Chief Electoral Officer, British Columbia

Provisions of the Act Electoral Insight – November 1999

The recall legislation includes these basic provisions.

a) Upon a successful petition, the Member ceases to hold office and the seat of the Member in the Legislative Assembly becomes vacant.

b) An application for a recall petition cannot be made within 18 months of a Member's election. This would allow time for a Member, once elected, to learn the duties of the job. Additionally, this period would discourage the phenomenon of "sore losers" immediately sponsoring a recall to overturn the election.

c) Only those who were registered voters in the Member's electoral district at the time of the election and are still registered at the time of signing the petition, although not necessarily in the Member's district, are entitled to sign. The Committee was of the opinion that recall should be viewed as a "reconsideration" by the electors of the choice they made at the last election.

d) More than 40 percent of the eligible voters who were registered in the Member's electoral district at the time of the election must sign the petition in order for it to be successful. (Using today's figures, the required number of verified signatures could vary from a low of 5 800 to a high of 18 470.) The committee had recommended a 50 percent figure, but this was reduced during debate in the committee stage of the Bill. These figures were seen as sufficiently high to protect the public interest in that a Member would not be subject to harassment.

e) A proponent has 60 days in which to collect the required number of signatures. The proponent may be assisted by volunteers who are registered voters (anywhere in the province) and have been resident in the province for at least six months before registering with the Chief Electoral Officer as canvassers.

f) Once a petition is submitted, the Chief Electoral Officer has 42 calendar days in which to verify the signatures contained therein. Verification is done by scanning the petition sheets to create digital images. Each petition signer's voter record is searched for on the computerized, permanent provincial voters list. Where a match is found, the signer's digital signature from the petition is visually compared (on a split-screen monitor) with the voter's digital signature on file from the voter-registration application.

g) If sufficient matches are verified, the proponent's petition-financing report is filed on time, and the expense limit has not been exceeded, the petition is declared successful and the Member ceases to hold office. [Expense limit: base $25 000; increased by 25 cents for each registered voter in excess of 25 000; and this combined number is again increased, if the population density of the riding is less than two registered voters per square kilometre, by 15 cents times the number of square kilometres, to a maximum increase of 25 percent of the base figure.]

h) If a vacancy is created, the Chief Electoral Officer notifies both the Member and the Speaker, upon which the Speaker issues a warrant for the issue of a writ of by-election within 90 days.

i) The recalled Member can be a candidate in the by-election.