Glover raising money for legal challenge

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This article was published 24/11/2021 (1126 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

FAILED leadership candidate Shelly Glover is raising money for her legal battle to overturn the Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba’s election results.

The Glover Democracy Defence Fund aims to raise $50,000 for her case, which will be heard Dec. 10 by Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench.

Glover, who did not respond Thursday to an interview request, said she’s fighting the good fight.

“Since Oct. 30, when the results of the PC Party of Manitoba leadership election were announced, I have been embroiled in pursuing justice,” her fundraising page says.

She alleges irregularities in the election that declared Heather Stefanson the winner and premier.

The former Winnipeg police officer and Conservative heritage minister launched the court action on Nov. 2. asking the court to declare the PC leadership election results invalid and order a new vote.

“Although there were many, many unusual irregular and concerning things that happened during the whole election, such as members not receiving ballots and not being given an opportunity to vote, it is what happened on Oct. 30 that is now before the courts in an expedited manner because all members and Manitobans need to know that the results were inaccurate,” Glover’s GoFundMe page says.

The online fundraiser was launched on the weekend and raised more than $31,000 of a $50,000 goal by midday Thursday. More than 100 donors had contributed, including two anonymous contributors who gave $5,000 and $3,000, the website shows.

In a court affidavit, Glover said the party gave her campaign team a spreadsheet early in the morning on the day of the vote — after the deadline had passed for mail-in ballots to be received — which said 16,045 votes had been gathered and were to be counted.

When the results were announced late in the afternoon, the ballots totalled 16,546, with Stefanson winning 51 per cent.

Party president Tom Wiebe said in his affidavit the spreadsheet that was given to the campaign teams in the early morning was not a final count.

“That spreadsheet was, to the knowledge of both campaign teams, understood not to be a definitive listing of the number of ballots to be counted,” Wiebe’s affidavit reads.

“I know this to be true because when I was present — Oct. 25 to 29, 2021 — during the process of verifying ballots, I listened to both campaign teams complain that the spreadsheet was not accurate.”

The only inaccurate information on the spreadsheet concerned information about the voters’ addresses, emails and phone numbers — not the total number of eligible voters, according to an affidavit filed by former Elmwood-Transcona MP Lawrence Toet. He served as Glover’s campaign co-manager.

His affidavit said the voter spreadsheet “was an accurate and complete voter list with regards to all eligible voters…”

— with file from The Canadian Press

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca