Liberal candidate Kusmierczyk calls for election recount in tight Windsor race
Incumbent lost to his Conservative rival by just 77 votes in last week’s federal election
Article content
Liberal Irek Kusmierczyk is asking the courts for a recount in Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore after multiple tabulation errors and a high number of rejected ballots made an already painfully tight race almost too close to call.
Kusmierczyk told the Star his team applied for a judicial recount Monday morning after the discovery of 526 rejected ballots and more than 20 “discrepancies” — four of which changed the ballot count by 157 votes.
Recommended Videos
tap here to see other videos from our team.
Liberal candidate Kusmierczyk calls for election recount in tight Windsor race Back to video
tap here to see other videos from our team.
The 526 rejected ballots accounted for “one of the highest totals in the country,” he said.
“We had dozens of volunteers serving as scrutineers in polling stations across the region, and because of their great work, we know there were ballots that were wrongly counted and wrongly rejected,” said Kusmierczyk, the riding’s Liberal member of Parliament since 2019.
“Elections Canada, from their own work, identified over 20 discrepancies, simply in how the results were communicated. Not even counted. They didn’t recount it.
“It’s how the numbers were communicated to Elections Canada in Ottawa, and they found 20 discrepancies, including four errors that had a material impact on the vote.”
After a standard post-election validation of results last week, the discovery of those four errors alone resulted in Conservative Kathy Borrelli’s lead in the April 28 federal election narrowing from 233 votes to 77. That’s only seven ballots short of the threshold for an automatic judicial recount.
Elections Canada’s preliminary results following Monday’s election had Borrelli at 31,901 votes and Kusmierczyk at 31,668.
The official count for Borrelli is now 32,062 votes. Kusmierczyk has 31,985, for a difference of 77 votes.
A judicial recount is automatically triggered when the difference between the two leading candidates is less than one one-thousandth of the total votes cast.
In Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore, 70,010 valid ballots were cast, so the cutoff is about 70 votes.
“We feel very strongly that we owe it to all residents to make sure that every vote was valid and that every valid vote was counted,” said Kusmierczyk. “This is a process to make sure that we have 100 per cent confidence, that residents have 100 per cent confidence in the outcome of this election.”
Until the counts are confirmed in the validation of votes, a standard procedure across Canada, election results are considered preliminary.
The validated results are considered final, unless changes are subsequently made following a judicial recount or a contested election proceeding.
Such situations are not unheard of. Recounts are currently underway or expected in several other ridings across Canada, including Terra Nova-The Peninsulas in Newfoundland, where winning Liberal candidate eked past the Conservative runner-up with 12 votes.
The Montreal-area riding of Terrebonne flipped on Thursday after Elections Canada published validated results for the region that showed the Bloc Quebecois nudged out the Liberals by 44 votes.
In Milton East-Halton Hills South, the validation process ended with Liberals inching past the Conservatives by 29 votes.
Elections Canada told the Star last week that the validation of results is a safety measure to catch human error.
On election night, the local Elections Canada officer receives results from each polling location by phone before entering them into the system.
The agency said that staff could mishear a result that was called in or make a mistake entering the data. Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore had 282 polls reporting.
Kusmierczyk said such mistakes were what led to the four “significant” errors that changed the vote by 157 ballots.
There were also 526 rejected ballots, some of which Kusmierczyk feels were wrongly rejected.
In one example, Kusmierczyk said someone wrote an X in the circle next to his name, then wrote a second X next to his name outside the circle.
“So, the intent of the voter is clear,” he said.
The next step in Kusmierczyk’s application will be a judicial hearing. His team must present evidence before a judge, who will decide if a recount should proceed. That hearing had yet to be scheduled Monday morning.
“I want to make this absolutely clear as well,” said Kusmierczyk. “We will absolutely, unequivocally accept the results of the judicial recount.”
Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.