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West Van election recount results due Friday

West Vancouver’s extremely close municipal election results have come down to a judicial recount.
recount

West Vancouver’s extremely close municipal election results have come down to a judicial recount.

North Vancouver provincial court Judge Joanne Challenger agreed to an application from current Mayor Michael Smith and council candidate Jim Finkbeiner on Wednesday to reopen the ballot boxes, examine all 11,818 ballots for irregularities and recount them before the election results can be made final and the new council can be sworn in on Monday night.

During the election campaign, Smith endorsed mayoral candidate (and former mayor) Mark Sager who finished just 21 votes behind mayor-elect (and current councillor) Mary-Ann Booth. Finkbeiner finished seventh overall in the council race, just 20 votes shy of Sharon Thompson, who won the sixth and final council seat.

Neither Smith nor Finkbeiner were in court on Wednesday but their lawyer Kevin Westell argued that a recount would be the prudent way to address the question of why there were 68 ballots counted out of the total 11,828 that did not register a vote for mayor.

“We say this is odd. We concede that it’s unknown whether or not these voters intentionally declined to select a mayoral candidate or whether they attempted to vote for a candidate and that vote simply wasn’t recorded. We don’t know. No steps were taken to take a look at this. No election official, including the (chief electoral officer) ever examined any of the ballots,” Westell said.

The district’s lawyer and Booth’s lawyer argued that a recount was unnecessary due to the way ballots are processed on election day. The voting tabulation machines automatically reject any ballot that has had too many votes cast, vote ovals only partially filled, or ballots left totally blank and the voter is given another chance to properly fill out a ballot.

“The problem is corrected before it becomes a problem,” said district lawyer Paul Hildebrand.

“The fact that there were 68 people who were recorded as not having cast a vote for mayor, that’s not considered an anomaly at all. Some people don’t vote for school board and only vote for council. Some people vote only for the mayor and not for the school board.”

Challenger, however, said her interpretation of the legislation that governs elections and recounts left her little discretion to reject Smith and Finkbeiner’s request.

“In my view, these narrow margins as well as the issue of the (68) ballots without declaring a vote for mayor are legitimate concerns with respect to the basis for a recount under (the legislation),” she said.

Reached for comment Wednesday evening, Smith welcomed the news.

“I’m happy to hear there’s a chance that every vote will be counted,” he said. “I don’t understand why anybody would object to just pulling out the paper ballots and counting them.”

On Thursday, the district marshaled 30 election officials, cancelled all classes at the Gleneagles Community Centre gym and transformed it into a make-shift elections office.

Under the watch of the chief electoral officer and a throng of scrutineers, all of the ballots were examined for “any irregularities on their face that might make the ballots subject to erroneous interpretation by the machines.”

Those ballots were segregated to be counted by hand. Challenger was in the Gleneagles gym, ready to adjudicate any cases where Booth or Sager’s scrutineers found reason to dispute what the voters’ intent on a ballot was.

Mail-in ballots that were previously rejected as spoiled because the voter did not follow the instructions will be back in play and could be counted if Challenger rules them valid.

The entire process was expected to wind into Thursday evening after press time, with Challenger making the results official in North Vancouver court on Friday morning.

The district is paying the up-front costs for the recount but Challenger will be asked to decide who should be picking up the tab.