Former Liberal cabinet minister Pauline Frost’s court case challenging the outcome of the Yukon election in her riding began Wednesday in territorial court.

The April 12 result in the Vuntut Gwitchin riding revealed a tie between Frost and NDP candidate Annie Blake, who is now the MLA.

After a recount and a Yukon Supreme Court judicial review, the tie was broken by drawing the names from a box. Blake won the seat, and Frost launched a court challenge a few days later.

The challenge hinges on a vote cast by a man who was incarcerated at the Whitehorse Correctional Centre during the election.

Frost’s team, led by Whitehorse lawyer James Tucker, is challenging the validity of his ballot, since he was registered to vote from the jail.

He has no fixed address, although his last permanent residence was in Old Crow and he is a member of the First Nation.

Tucker argued that he should have voted somewhere in Whitehorse, rather than the Vuntut Gwitchin riding, although they couldn’t say in which riding he should have cast his ballot.

Tucker told Yukon Supreme Court of Yukon that “carelessness” in authorizing the voter shows April’s election was not held in good faith.

The man jailed in Whitehorse had indicated to an election officer that he wanted to vote in his home riding of Vuntut Gwitchin, Tucker said.

He was permitted to cast a special ballot without the required identification or residency.

Failure to follow the Elections Act in that authorization process produced results that did not reflect the will of legitimate voters in the riding, Tucker argued.

Chief electoral officer Maxwell Harvey did not follow up nor review documentation relevant to the man’s application for a special ballot, he alleged.

Tucker's colleague, Luke Faught, told the court the man has demonstrated a pattern of choosing to stay in Whitehorse when he’s had several opportunities in recent years to return to his home riding in northwest Yukon.

The base definition of a residence is a person’s true, fixed, permanent home, to which he or she intends to return after any absence, Faught said.

He said the voter did not have the intention of returning to the Vuntut Gwitchin riding on the day of his vote.

Blake’s lawyer, Shaunagh Stikeman, disputed that argument.

She said the man has spent most of the last 20 years incarcerated outside his home community of Old Crow and he has long stated, including in court, that he intends to go back there.

His family lives there, and any doubt about his true home or intention to return when he’s free to do so is answered by acknowledging his Indigenous identity and the special connection Indigenous people have with their territories, Stikeman added.

The man’s “connection ... to the land in and around Old Crow, is proof in itself of his intention to return and the ongoing existence of his true home,” she said.

The man had no other residence before being incarcerated, had never established residency elsewhere, and his ballot was cast legitimately, she argued.

The case continued today, with Justice Suzanne Duncan presiding.

– With files from The Canadian Press