Last week, P.E.I. had a provincial election. Not only did the Green party finish third (ahead of the NDP), they did so even though it was their first ever provincial election in that province.

I’m adding this to the list of Green accomplishments that we were previously told were impossible. (You know, things like running a candidate in every riding, doing it a second time, getting over half a million votes in a federal election, doing it again, having a nationally televised policy conference, almost beating the Liberals in London North Centre, tying the NDP in a federal poll. That kind of thing.)

And here’s a not so funny story. In order to report the election results, Canadian Press provided a web tool to newspapers like The Guardian and The Globe and Mail. It was programmed to accept the voting results and convert them into a graphical representation. The only problem is, they hard-coded the Green Party into the “other” category. So, no matter how many votes the Green Party of P.E.I. received, they wouldn’t show up. No one would have noticed, except for when the Greens got more votes than the NDP, CP kept incorrectly showing the NDP in third place. It wasn’t until CP received numerous complaints that they went in and corrected it a day later. Apparently the possibility of the Green Party finishing third had never occurred to them.

One can only assume they will not underestimate us again.