Recount ordered for West Vancouver
Posted October 31, 2018 3:04 pm.
Last Updated October 31, 2018 5:59 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
WEST VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A judicial recount has been ordered to determine who will be West Vancouver’s next mayor.
A provincial court judge in North Vancouver has approved an application filed by outgoing mayor Michael Smith after he learned Mary-Ann Booth’s victory on Oct. 20 was by only 21 votes.
Smith endorsed lawyer Mark Sager, who was the runner-up.
“I’m pleased. I think every vote should be counted. I think it is part of our fundamental democratic process. I think the decision is correct,” said Sager.
“This isn’t so much about me. This is simply about ensuring that everybody who turns out to vote, their vote gets counted,” he added.
Kevin Westell represented Smith in court on Wednesday.
“If you tabulate all the votes for the mayoral candidates that were cast, that’s a number that’s 68 votes less,” Westell said. “So, we don’t know with respect to those 68 whether people made a decision not to vote for any mayoral candidate, but voted for councillors and other things — or whether there’s some error or irregularity that caused those votes to not be picked up by the machine.”
He says the recount will start Thursday morning.
“They’re going to have 14 different voting machines in there,” Westell explained. “There’s going to be scrutineers for any candidate that wants to have a scrutineer there. There’s going to be a judge presiding and present … overseeing matters.”
Westell adds a procedure has been set for the recount for the mayoral candidates.
“They will be looking at the ballots, seeing if there’s any apparent irregularity on the face of the ballots and, if there isn’t, feeding those ballots back into the machines to be recounted. If there is an irregularity with respect to the ballots, then they’re going to be hand-counting them. That hand counting will be overseen by a judicial officer — who will be Judge Challenger, who presided over this proceeding.”
The recount includes a review of votes cast for city councillors because one hopeful — Jim Finkbeiner — lost by only 20 votes.
The final results could be announced by the end of Thursday. Westell says it’s possible Sager could emerge as the victor.
“We’re back in court on Friday morning. If there’s any controversy left to be sorted out … that’s going to take place in a proceeding in court on Friday. Hopefully, we’ll have a result, at latest, Friday morning.”
