This fundraiser is to help faithful Catholic Toronto school trustee candidate Robert Pella cover the legal costs of getting an Ontario judge to agree to order a recount of the October 24, 2022 school board election. Pella allegedly lost by a single vote, under suspicious circumstances. 

Pella has hired an experienced Catholic lawyer, Phil Horgan, to argue the case before a judge and to also help conduct the recount. 

Election result is in doubt 

On the evening of October 24th, after the polls had closed, it appeared that Robert Pella had defeated the incumbent, Joseph Martino, by 7 votes.   

From shortly after 8:00 pm on October 24 when the polls closed, until at least 2:00 am the next morning on October 25, the vote count was unchanged with Pella appearing to have won the Ward 1 election with 2,139 votes to Martino’s 2,132.   

However, in the dark of night, while everyone slept, the result was flipped.  

By the next morning, the City of Toronto’s website displayed Martino as the victor by one (1) vote. Observers find it unusual that 24 votes, apparently from long-term care homes according to the City Clerk’s office, were “found” and counted although the polls were long since closed.  

Some known facts... 

 
-Hundreds of ballots cast in the Ward 1 election were recorded by vote tabulator machines as containing either no vote, or in one case too many votes, in the Catholic trustee race.  

-Voting machines may not detect faint marks, and the City of Toronto has refused to release any details of their calibration.  

-Other ballots were “adjudicated” by election officials, who were allowed to create replacement ballots if they deemed it necessary.  

Given the ever-present possibility of human or machine error, Pella wants a manual recount – a reasonable request in a race with a mere one-vote margin.  

Balance of power is at stake 

In the last term of office, Joseph Martino was part of a majority voting bloc on the 12-member Toronto Catholic School Board which passed resolutions in favour of a “gender identity” and “gender expression” policy, flying the Gay Pride flag on TCDSB premises, and other policies contrary to Catholic teaching, despite the objections of the Cardinal Archbishop of Toronto.  

The TCDSB’s new policies enable it to punish anyone who objects to cross-dressing or the use of pronouns like “they”, “ze”, or “zir” in schools. This threatens Catholics who adhere to their faith. Recent news accounts of the prosthetic breast-wearing male shop teacher at an Oakville high school demonstrate just how radical the sort of policy Martino supported is. 

If a judge agrees to order a recount of the October 24th election in Ward 1, and Pella unseats Martino, the dissident majority’s stranglehold on power could be broken. Pella and the other faithful Catholics could end up with a majority of trustees on their side, and the ability to reverse some of the policy damage done over the previous years. 

Please donate now to ensure Pella gets the recount he and the Catholic electors of Toronto deserve! 

*** All donations minus processing fees will be used to cover Robert's legal fees ***