by William Marsden, The Gazette
A Quebec Court judge has acquitted a deputy returning officer of illegally rejecting 53 per cent of the ballots cast in his Chomedey polling district during the 1995 referendum.
The ruling could set the stage for the ultimate acquittal of most, if not all, of the 31 people charged last year with vote fraud in the referendum.
Judge Carol Richer ruled yesterday that although the accused, Mathieu Lefebvre, 20, rejected numerous ballots in a "patently unreasonable manner," he did not intend to commit fraud.
Richer's judgment set the bar unusually high for a conviction in a case involving the referendum and elections law. Past cases, such as the recent conviction of PQ MNA Monique Simard for voting illegally in an Outremont municipal election, did not require that the prosecution prove intent to violate the law.
Richer, however, made this the cornerstone of his judgment and applied a strict criminal interpretation of intent to a penal violation.
"We are considering launching an appeal," said François Casgrain, Quebec's chief electoral officer.
He said he was surprised by the verdict and will study Richer's written judgment, which is to be made public Friday, before making a decision on whether to appeal it.
"Given the file and the evidence, we believed that all the elements were there for a conviction," Casgrain said, adding that the ruling will "not prevent us from proceeding in the other cases."
Casgrain has 52 charges of vote fraud and illegally rejecting ballots pending against 30 other defendants. Of those charged, 28 were deputy returning officers in Chomedey, Marguerite-Bourgeoys, Laurier-Dorion and Notre Dame de Grâce. Two Yes committee officials, Réal Lafontaine and Robert Masse, are accused of creating a scheme to cause the illegal vote rejections. They face 24 charges of election fraud.
The date for the next trials is to be set Dec. 12 before Judge Richer. It is not known whether Richer will preside over all the remaining cases.
Tom Mulcair, Liberal MNA for Chomedey, called Richer's ruling "disquieting" because it "set a very high level of proof for such a case."
Lefebvre was charged with fraudulently violating the Quebec elections and referendum law. He faced a fine of $100 to $1,000.
Richer noted that Lefebvre was only 18 when he was hired as a deputy returning officer in Chomedey. Lefebvre testified that he had not previously worked as an election official, was not politically active and took the job only to earn money.
Deputy returning officers have the final say at each polling station on whether a ballot is accepted or rejected. They are chosen by the party in power, which in the case of the referendum was the Parti Québécois.
Richer said Lefebvre took two training sessions before the Oct. 30, 1995, referendum. The first session was organized by PQ officials working for the Yes committee and was not sanctioned by the chief electoral officer. The PQ officials told Lefebvre and other deputy returning officers to reject all votes that were not perfect. Party officials gave each worker several pages that showed more than 30 examples of votes which the PQ officials claimed a judge had rejected during a ballot recount. In fact, as Richer noted in his judgment, these votes had never been rejected by a court.
Lefebvre then took a second course given by the deputy chief electoral officer for Chomedey, Gilles Gauthier. This was an officially sanctioned course given prior to all elections and referendums. During this session, Lefebvre received four examples of votes that were patently illegal. All others he was told to accept.
Nevertheless, Lefebvre followed the instructions given to him by PQ officials with the Yes committee. It was not explained why he chose to follow these instructions and not those of Gauthier.
Lefebvre testified last month that part-way through his vote counting he began to have misgivings about the large number of votes he was rejecting. He claimed that when he asked a polling official whether he was doing the right thing, he was told not to be so severe.
Lefebvre then returned to the counting table and began revising his decisions about the rejected ballots.
Several minutes later, however, the official informed him that a female official, who also remained nameless, had told him that Lefebvre should be strict with his rejections.
Lefebvre then continued to reject legal ballots. By the end of the evening, he had rejected 96 out of 181 votes, or 53 per cent.
It was the highest rejection rate in Quebec and contributed to an over-all rejection rate for Chomedey of 11.6 per cent, compared with 1.82 per cent or 86,501 rejected votes for the entire province.
Mulcair questioned why the prosecution decided to open with the Lefebvre case, which was the weakest.
"Why choose to start with this particular prosecution, where in addition to being a young man who had never voted, he was the only person who they could possibly argue had asked an official for his opinion on the rejection of the ballots?" Mulcair asked.
Lefebvre was not in court yesterday. His lawyer, Pascal Garneau, said he had to attend classes at the Université de Montréal.
Garneau claimed in an interview that the accusation against his client was a "tempest in a teapot."
"My client may have unreasonably rejected ballots, but the judge could not for a second think that my client had the intent to commit fraud," he said.
He said he hopes Lefebvre's acquittal will lead to the withdrawal of charges against the other 30 defendants.