Incumbent Andrew Marks is taking the final ward five councillor seat after today’s recount.
Candidate Cory Robin called for a recount after Election Nigh results showed he missed a seat at the round table by two-votes to Incumbent Andrew Marks. The night October 22nd with Marks having 2,637 votes and Robin was right behind with 2,635.
City Clerk Steph Palmateer says today staff re-verified the online votes and re-tabulated all the ward five paper ballots. “Each of the candidates affected had the opportunity to inspect all the ballots that were cast in last Monday’s election.” He says this is a little different than a traditional paper ballot because the tabulators detect spoiled ballots before they are counted.
The tabulated results have Marks with 2,637 votes for and 2,635 ballots for Robin, the exact same as the original count.
Marks says this is the first recount he is aware of since he started municipal politics in 2000. He says the overall process was “very fair, transparent, I learned a lot about the electronic voting and countermeasures. Even how each one of us got to review every single ballot and got through them individually and there were no discrepancies that we found.”
He adds that it’s been eight days of trepidation since the election and this morning he had a few nerves because he didn’t know how the process could go and something could have changed. “I’m glad it’s done, I’m glad the recount is over and I’m glad I’ve been re-elected to represent the residents in ward five.”