Candidate Who Finished 9th wants a Re-Count

Sunday, November 20, 2005 04:56 PM

Council Candidate, Ryan Yorston, says he'll be seeking a re-count of Saturday's election results...

Yorston had been in the 8th and final spot for City Council when some of the initial polling results started to roll in, but, in the end, he slipped out of contention, falling 46 votes behind Debora Munoz's total of 5497.

Yorston says, "I'm definitely going to do a re-count. I mean, it's the only sensible thing to do." He admits, "It is a long shot, but some people do vote when they shouldn't and I am kind of looking towards the mail-in ballots, they were pretty lop-sided. So hopefully we have room to move there."

Yorston plans to contact City Clerk Don Schaffer Monday morning. Reached by phone Sunday afternoon, Schaffer says Yorston will have to apply for a judicial re-count in provincial court and he says the parameters allowing the move are pretty narrow in a municipal elections.

Schaffer, who was the Chief Electoral Officer for the election says he's entirely comfortable with the results as they stand.

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Posted on Sunday, November 20, 2005 04:56 PM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: Chester on November 20 2005 7:00 PM

I would support the request for a recount. I think that based on the closeness of the numbers, a recount would be the right thing to do.

I wonder what would make Chief Elecoral Officer Don Schaffer uncomfortable with the results? Chester

Posted by: Chadermando on November 20 2005 10:23 PM

I think a review is in order considering the vote counting machines counting our votes were made by a GW Bush campaign team member company from Texas with close ties to the company buying Terasan Gas.

To many conflicts of interest with no laws governing the vote counting machines and no independent oversight of their programmers. My trust in democracy is founded on the credibility of an election and this is done through credible audits or better yet verifiable vote counting processes.

If City Clerk Don Schaffer feels comfortable with these machines and the vote counting process then that is not enough for me.

If he wanted to have the benefit of the doubt he would at minimum have had selections for throwing away votes on the ballot so every voters intent is recorded.

I would like to see a scrutiny of the voter list of those who cast votes to see if the votes were legitimate and if they match the anonymous ballots. Then I would like to see independent hand counts of the ballots that pass the first test.

This is the minimum before making this vote official. Democracies should not be based on computer programs that do not issue receipts for verification purposes.

The whole system is flawed. If we involve computers then I should be able to go home with my anonymous receipt to verify through a matching serial number that my vote was indeed tabulated correctly.

If votes are not being tabulated correctly or there are more votes counted then registered at the voting both, then we have a problem.

Time Well Tell

Posted by: Chadermando on November 20 2005 11:29 PM

Krisb good point, so therefore if each Kinsley voter voted on average twice it would account for the increase in voters over previous elections.

I wonder if a cross refference of registered names on the voters list from the various voter locations will take place.

How many people voted more than once in this election?