I’m not sure who should be alerted, but lack of sufficient scrutineer oversight seems to be one that should really get some attention.

-a mandated recount is different from a requested one. In a mandated one Elections Canada pays. In a requested one the requester has to pay all costs if it does not go in his/her favour (thousands of dollars). If he stops before the end and gives up he doesn’t have to pay. That is why the the Martin recount was stopped just before the end.

-this election saw a new form called the ‘bingo’ form. Every 30 minutes the unique number assigned to each voter that voted was recorded on a paper and given to a central registrar who then gave it to all scrutineers. That way scrutineers did not have to sit at polling stations all day. In fact in my polling center (I was a DRO) we only had 3 or 4 scrutineers all day for 50 polls. This was problematic during the count because there were no scrutineers around to observe and the one I finally found to sign my form wouldn’t have had a clue whether it was valid or not. I would say that this could lead to all kinds of errors that would have been caught in previous years.

Cheers.

Send money , guns, and lawyers.

It’s amazing that the one in Vancouver South could be wrapped up in a day!

But, in point of fact, they already did just that (i.e. personally examine the mark on the piece of paper) on voting night, right?

This is about verification of verification, isn’t it? In other words, another layer of quality control placed on the quality control performed on voting night.

I’m just answering the question about how they could reason halting the recount.

That is all.

Austin

See, that was your first mistake. You should have written “is the man” in the little blank space. (Or, if your preferred candidate is female, “got it all goin’ on,” though you have to write quite small for that; better to go with the male candidate.)

All I know is my ballot is potentially being recounted as we speak. I damn well want them to look at the mark I personally put on the piece of paper, rather than “assume” I did something based on what a bunch of people at another voting station did.

Austin

But based on statistics alone, it is very unlikely that the outcome will change.

Austin

If they reviewed 28 ballot boxes out of 184, this corresponds to 15.2% of the total ballot boxes.

During the recount, they found that 4 votes were turned over in favour of Young out of the 28 boxes examined (randomly selection assumed or perhaps each party chooses 14 or an equal number + random that may be biased in their favour).

This represents a *net* rate of vote conversion to Young (there is a chance that ballots will go to Dosanjh upon re-examination too).

Given that, if they continue to examine the remaining 184-28 = 156 boxes (i.e. 6.6 times more), the expected number of conversions would be 26.3 in Young’s favour, which is not enough to exceed the difference of 33 found on election night.

This may the reasoning behind stopping the recount.

Austin

myl: Only in the legal sense. Given that the two candidates received nearly the same number of votes, and that there is some randomness in what those who were unable or unwilling to vote, it is more accurate to say the people were indifferent between the two. That is, roughly the same number of people would be pissed off if either candidate were elected.

The corollary holds, that the loser sholdn’t spend the next (<=)four years mumbling “if they had just counted every vote…”

But the biggest deal: the Vancouver South voters shouldn’t spend the next (<=)four years wondering if the will of the people carried or not.

This is on a lesser scale of overall national importance than the obviously biased rejected referendum ballots in Quebec that the provincial chief electoral oficer didn’t care about as much as a bunch of evil Canadians holding a downtown Montreal rally the week before the vote. But whenever the will of the people is not fairly treated, and-or seen to be unfairly treated, the country is the poorer for it.

Thank you for keeping an eye on this one. I’m sure I’m not the only one who will stay tuned for updates.

I believe the Clement recount you cite was the last election, where Tony C’s margin was razor-thin. I therefore further presume the recount was mandatory. Why any candidate should be granted the option of conceding is beyond me. If that’s in the law then in my humble opinion the law is an ass. Does the will of the voters not matter anymore?

But if that is indeed the letter of the law (if all candidates say a mandatory recount is over, then it’s over), as dumb as that may be, the judge might have an out here. And yet, if I have been paying attention to the limited dribs and drabs you have been able to unearth, at least one candidate is asserting that no such unanimous authorization of abandonment took place. Weird.

Sorry, I tripped up on that sentence, ITQ. Did you mean “and if either says yes”…?

As to your Q earlier (should the trailing candidate be permitted to abandon a recount), I don’t know what the law says, but I would hope that a MANDATORY recount cannot be a stupid piddling sampling, nor can anyone (least of all the judge who won’t do the job properly, grrrr)have the power to call it off. It is not just a candidate or a party whose interests are affected; this lover of democracy contends that it is the riding’s voters’ interests that matter most of all. If I were drafting the Elections Law fresh, I would allow for a candidate who started a challenge (i.e not an automatic recount) to withdraw the challenge at any stage.

Was Esquimalt Juan de Fuca a mandatory recount or a recount requested by second place candidate? Feel free to not answer, I am sure a little googling will get me that answer in a few minutes anyways. My only point is that that particular detail matters in my mind. Thanks for asking.

But then, if anyone handed me a blank sheet of paper to re-write the elections law, I wouldn’t be trampling on the free-speech rights of citizens with all the ridiculous spending limits, either. A Montreal area mayor was found guilty of violating Quebec election laws because he rented a hall at his own expense during the last Quebec election campaign to explain to his fellow citizens why he felt a particular provincial party would best defend the interests of a small town swamped by the big city. Didn’t matter; his preferred party didn’t come close on election day. And so what if it did — he had a point he felt important to make, and his fellow citizens could hear him out (or not) and agree (or not) with his argument. Wow, that sounds a lot like free people living in a democracy. But the few hundred bucks he spent was an undeclared campaign expense and ZAP you’re a lawbreaker. Pay your fine. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

At the end of the count Martin was leading by 70 votes over DeSouza, there were 67 disputed ballots for judge’s consideration when recount was called off but according to Election Canada there were also 129 rejected ballots.
http://enr.elections.ca/ElectoralDistricts_e.aspx?ed=1298
Nobody mentions what happened to them. Were they also examined and counted??
The reason I ask is because ballots are rejected when they are questioned by scrutineers on Election Day in a process that was basically repeated at the court yesterday.

Common sense tells me that all disputed ballots (rejected during election and questioned during re-count) should be examined by the judge. Rejected ballots as far as I know could not be just put back into ballot box for re-count (re-examination) so their number would not decrease at the end of the re-count, so we can only speculate that this 67 disputed ballots were in addition to 129 rejected ballots for the total 196 ballots. 196 “undetermined” ballots is much greater number than 70 votes that Martin was leading over DeSouza. It seems to me that unless spoiled ballots were examined and added we will never know for sure who actually won in Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca riding in 2008.

Perhaps you should ask Maurizio Bevilacqua whether it’s worth the bother of going to the Court of Appeal.

The other thing that a lot of posters seem to miss is that more than a few ballots get reallocated (among all the parties) in a formal recount. On election night the ballots are counted by the DRO and poll-clerk for each poll, plus any scrutineers. That means a minimum of 400 pairs of eyes trying to interpret voter intent. At a judicial recount, the ballots are counted by a very small cadre of counters, with the judge making rulings (hopefully consistent rulings) about what constitutes the voters intent. This being the case, a recount is more likely to produce an accurate outcome.

It strikes me that as this was a statutorily mandated recount, based on a close result, every vote needs to be counted to be certain. It won’t necessarily produce a different outcome but a slipshod recount only makes things worse.

I’m beginning to understand why Paul Wells has disabled comments on his blog.

…seriosuly people, as new information seems to come available, I would hope the lesson we’re taking is why we shouldn’t jump to conclusions, not that we should come up with ever more outlandish explanations.

If Dosanjh is the “true” winner after a full recount, he is entitled to the legitimacy of the result. His constituents deserve the confidence that he was indeed the one they elected. No harping allowed from the other candidates, but only if there is no suspicion.

And, of course, if Young ends up winning after a full recount, she deserves the same legitimacy, with no harping allowed from the other candidates, but only if there is no suspicion.

And if a highly paid judge cannot understand that simple concept, maybe it’s time to draw on the nice fat pension, and/or to become an even more highly paid lawyer…