Matt Todd's Pursuit of Idyll Minds

My petition to have the election of James Coleridge declared invalid was successful. The judge released her decision yesterday. He is no longer a member of City Council for the City of White Rock. He is required to pay $20,000 toward the cost of a byelection to fill his vacant seat, and some of my legal costs will be reimbursed.

What is ironic about the decision is that the judge seemed less concerned about him pretending he didn’t know who sent the contentious email and making up stories to cover his tracks, it was that he was lying about being honest in his campaign advertising — he was selling himself as being someone who citizens could trust to be honest with them, all the while he was lying.

But this judgment is less about lying than it is about integrity. They are related, but there is a difference. Integrity requires that you accept responsibility for your choices. Yes, Coleridge lied, but it was his lack of integrity — his unwillingness to accept responsibility for his incorrect and misleading statements — that cost him his office. In reading the judgment, it sounds like, had he enough integrity to admit his error when he had the chance (before I filed a petition in Supreme Court to force him to do so), he probably would have escaped this consequence.