If you want to get a measure of the daunting odds of a successful recall campaign against a sitting B.C. Liberal MLA, check out the riding-by-riding breakdown of the anti-HST petition.

For recall to be successful, at least 40 per cent of the registered voters in that particular riding have to sign the recall petition. Although the anti-HST petition easily accumulated more than 10 per cent of the voters in every riding, only one riding currently held by a B.C. Liberal MLA even came close to meeting the higher recall number.

That would be Cariboo-Chilcotin, where some 6,524 voters signed the petition. That is 1,748 names short of what would be required to successfully recall the sitting MLA, Donna Barnett.

Two other ridings also scored high, relative to what's required for a recall, but both of those ridings - Kootenay-West and Fraser-Nicola - are held by NDP MLAs.

The riding that collected the most signatures was Saanich North-The Islands, where more than 11,500 voters signed the petition. But as impressive as that lofty total is, it is still almost 6,000 signatures short of the number required for a successful recall.

Adding to the challenge of mounting a recall campaign can be seen in the huge number of invalid signatures the anti-HST petition collected. Petition organizers claimed that more than 700,000 people signed the petition, but Elections B.C. said in the end the number of valid signatures was just over 557,000.

So almost one in four signatures were invalid, and it's likely the same inaccuracy rate would occur in a recall sign-up. That means any recall campaign needs to aim at collecting more than 50 per cent of the registered voters - not 40 per cent.

Presumably, a major factor in such a high error rate is the out-of-date voters' list. Every day, people move in and out of every riding, and the list gets more inaccurate as time goes by.

By the time any recall campaign even begins (the earliest kickoff is Nov. 15), most ridings' population would have seen a turnover, since the list was last updated, of as much as 20 per cent. That's going to make a tough sign-up job even tougher.

It's true that in many ridings, anti-HST petition organizers stopped collecting signatures when they thought they had hit the 15 per cent mark. But there's no evidence if they kept the petition sheets out there they would have hit the much higher recall level.

As well, the period to gather signatures on a recall petition is just 60 days, which is one-third shorter than the time frame allowed the anti-HST petition.

Add it all up, and it makes for a very high mountain for recall proponents to scale.

Nevertheless, having underestimated the popularity of the anti-HST petition, I'm reluctant to state unequivocally that any attempt at recall is doomed to failure.

There clearly is widespread anger and frustration among a lot of voters right now, and much of it is, not surprisingly, directed at the B.C. Liberal government.

The two anti-HST campaigners, Bill Vander Zalm and Chris Delaney, have sent out mixed messages about when they would begin recall campaigns and how many MLAs will be targeted.

Sometimes, they have said they'll start in November, and at other times they've said they'd wait until spring. They're still hoping the B.C. Liberal government will scrap the HST, but I wouldn't bet on it.

The all-party legislative committee now dealing with the anti-HST petition may very well submit the law to repeal the tax to the legislature, but hardly anyone expects it to be passed into law.

So expect some recall campaigns to begin in earnest at some point. And some of them may defy the odds and actually succeed.

Aside from Donna Barnett, the Liberal MLAs seemingly most vulnerable to a recall campaign appear to be John Slater in Boundary-Similkameen (where another 2,784 people would have to sign a recall petition) and Bill Bennett in Kootenay East (3,961 names short).

Keep in mind that for all the publicity and attention paid to the anti-HST petition, and for all the apparent depth of the government's unpopularity, more than three-quarters of the electorate never even bothered to sign it.

Getting a huge chunk of them to sign a different kind of petition may prove to be a hard sell. But you never know these days - particularly when the born-again, indefatigable Vander Zalm is running the show!

Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global B.C.