“There’s lies, damn lies, and statistics,” to quote Justice Peter J. Rogers in the courtroom yesterday, when I spoke about how statistics can be skewed to show anything we want them to show. That’s all that the school board lawyer had in her arsenal to defend the school board’s position.
The lawyer for the school board, rushed into court late yesterday morning. She then had to rush back out to her car because she had forgotten something. After providing me with the cheque Justice Rogers had ordered her to bring, she apologized to him and blamed me for the cavalier attitude that she displayed the previous day. She submitted to the court, an unfiled affidavit – somewhat incredulous considering I had to drive to Kelowna last Friday so they could have a filed copy of an affidavit I had provided. It had been filed as required but the copy they had received didn’t have a court stamp on it and they insisted that I must provide them with a stamped copy. She provided me with a response from the school board that contained nothing but supposition and conjecture, but at least it was something. Since December 8th, they had pinned their whole case on a small procedural error and had not even considered the fact that it may be dismissed and they may have to defend their position. Using supposition, speculation, and conjectured statistics, she spun the numbers to show that another 1000 votes needed to be cast to change the results. She went on to speak about how no one in our community cared about this issue. No one called them about it even though the error had been reported in local media. For proof that it had been reported in local media, she provided copies of articles that had been published in the Oliver Chronicle, Penticton InfoNews, and even one from Vancouver. Nothing from Osoyoos local media. This is yet another example of the dismissive attitude that the School Board has toward our community.
After Ms. Watmough finished presenting her arguments, Justice Peters asked me if I had a response. Since I had just received the response and had not even seen the affidavit she was providing, I asked if I could have some time to review the material. Justice Rogers granted me a short recess (45 minutes), some of which was taken up accompanying Ms. Watmough and the court reporter to the Court Registry to get the affidavit filed and provide me with a copy. The affidavit that she was filing, hadn’t even been dated by Ms. Minnabarriet prior to her having it notarized and the court reporter had to get Ms. Watmough, to take care of that before filing it and making a copy for me.
In the short amount of time I had to prepare, I was able to present to Justice Rogers, three other possible scenarios, based on manipulation of the statistics that they had provided. Had I been given the same 20 days to prepare a response, like they had, I would have been able to provide many more alternatives. Perhaps Justice Rogers didn’t think I needed more time. Perhaps he didn’t think there was much to rebut. When I began to present these scenarios and talk about how statistics can be manipulated to show what ever we want them to show, Justice Rogers agreed, saying, “It’s said that there’s lies, damn lies, and statistics.” When I finished presenting alternate scenarios, I stressed that no weight should be put on any of these scenarios. That none of the statistics provided by either the school board or myself should be considered reliable. Referencing the most recent BC Election, federal Election, U.S. Election, and Brexit, I reminded Justice Rogers that no matter how good the polling is, no matter how much we already know, predictions have been proven to be unreliable.
In response to their contention that our community doesn’t care about this issue, I spoke about the comments and backlash through social media and the absence of any credibility that he school board has in our community. Contacting the school board with a concern is like “hitting your head against a brick wall”, so why would anyone contact them.
The school board, through their lawyer was still unable to provide any real proof that a second advanced polling opportunity would not have affected the outcome of the election.
I reminded the court, and quoted case law, to show that after establishing the existence of a significant irregularity, the onus is on the respondents (school board and Ms. Minnabarriet) to prove it did not have a material affect on the results. The important word here is “prove” – not “think” or “believe”. I also acknowledged the reluctance of the court to overturn an election and to disregard the wishes of a duly elected body – the school board. I reminded the court that the Local Government Act was drafted by a duly elected body as well. That the school board was required to follow the rules that this elected body had put in place, and they did not.
After I completed my presentation, Justice Rogers thanked us and said, “this turned out to be a very interesting case.” He has a lot to think about so he will take some time to deliberate before making a decision. He will render his decision some time early in the new year. Now we wait.
Penny Duperron