Coin toss breaks election tie in PEI, what do we do in Nova Scotia?
Posted May 21, 2015 08:57:07 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
In PEI, it was a coin toss that determined who would represent the riding of Vernon River-Stratford after a judicial recount of ballots ended in a tie, but what are the rules here in Nova Scotia?
At one point, the returning officer got to cast the deciding vote.
However in 1999, when the results ended up even in Shelburne, that returning officer didn’t want her vote to be public because the position is non-partisan.
Elections Nova Scotia’s chief electoral officer Dana Doiron told News 95.7 how they broke the tie.
“What she did was put each name on a piece of paper, put it in a hat, and drew the winning candidate,” he said.
Doiron said that set a precedent, which was reviewed, and then became a law that stands to this day.
He said our system has one advantage over PEI’s coin toss.
“As unlikely as a tie is, and as really unlikely as a three-way tie is, if we had a three-way tie, a coin toss wouldn’t do it.”
In a lot of provinces, by-elections are held in ridings where the vote ends in a tie.
According to Doiron, if we did that here, that method would cost over $200-thousand per by-election. The cost of a hat, pen and paper is considerably less.
