Busy, busy (I)

The Office of the Chief Electoral Officer — also operating as "Elections Newfoundland Labrador" — has a "business plan" (why does an officer of the legislature have something called a "business plan"?) to take its very important work up to the next election in 2011.

The pdf file is available here.

In its business plan, Elections Dannystan helpfully informs its public:

For the past year or so, the Office has been extremely busy. A Province-wide Enumeration was conducted in May 2007 to effectively update the voter’s list and an evaluation of the Electoral Boundaries was done, followed by a Boundary Redistribution. The 2007 General Election took place on October 9, 2007.

Notice the temporal references here. "For the past year or so", and two references to 2007 sandwiching a reference to "an evaluation of the Electoral Boundaries was done, followed by a Boundary Redistribution".

The Electoral Boundaries Commission — which was cleverly made "non-partisan" by making it ALL partisan — was appointed on March 13, 2006. It published its proposed electoral map on August 10, 2006. It held hearings on its proposal in the fall of 2006. It submitted its final report on November 20, 2006.

The new electoral map legislation received Royal Assent on March 27, 2007, having been passed by the House inside 24 hours a few days before.

Elections Dannystan's "business plan" was tabled in the House of Assembly on June 30, 2008.

Counting backwards, the "past year" would extend back to June 30, 2007.

Even if you're in a charitable mood, and give Elections Dannystan the "past year or so", it's still very difficult to imagine how, in the "past year or so" leading up to June 30, 2007, Elections Dannystan could in any way have been evaluating electoral boundaries, given that the final report of the EBC was published in November of the calendar year before.

How, then, to explain this bizarre claim? It has to be (choose one of the following):

• That while the CEO's "business plan" was tabled on June 30th, 2008, it was actually sitting somewhere collecting dust for the number of months prior which would make the reference to "past year or so" sensical instead of nonsensical, or
  
• That the CEO is evaluating electoral boundaries outside of the times and process laid down by the Electoral Boundaries Act, or
  
• That the CEO is so desperate to make itself look sooper bizzy that it is taking credit for work that was long since already done.