The Liberals inched another seat closer to a majority government on Saturday, after a judicial recount left their candidate as the winner in the Quebec riding of Terrebone, by a margin of just one vote.
An official with Elections Canada confirmed to The Canadian Press that Liberal Tatiana Auguste will finish ahead of incumbent Bloc Québécois candidate Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné.
It brings the Liberals to 170 seats in the House of Commons, two shy of the 172 needed for a majority government. The Bloc seat count falls to 22.
Auguste was initially projected to win the riding by 35 votes after the April 28 election, but on May 1, following the required postelection validation process, Sinclair-Desgagné, who was first elected in 2021, moved ahead by 44 votes.
The win was returned to Auguste following the judicial recount, with Auguste receiving 23,352 votes and Sinclair-Desgagné receiving 23,351.
A judicial recount is automatic when the number of votes cast for the candidate with the most votes and the number of votes cast for any other candidate is less than 0.1 per cent of the valid votes cast. That was true in this case.
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The recount was to begin on Thursday and was completed Saturday. Elections Canada said last week that the recount would be overseen by Superior Court of Quebec Justice Danielle Turcotte.
A validation process is done by the returning officer, who reviews the cumulative addition of votes in a riding from every poll, based on the counts determined at every polling station in the presence of party scrutineers and election officers. It does not recount the ballots, or review ballots that were deemed to be invalid.
A judicial recount looks at all the ballots again, verifying the ones that were initially accepted and reconsidering ballots that were rejected. It takes place in the presence of a judge from a Superior Court in the affected province or territory.
The recount in Terrebonne added 74 votes to the total number of valid votes and increased the vote count of four of the six candidates. Auguste gained 56 votes, and Sinclair-Desgagné gained 11. The Conservative candidate, Adrienne Charles gained five votes, and the NDP candidate Maxime Beaudoin, gained four.
The Green candidate saw their vote total reduced by two, while the People’s Party candidate total stayed the same.
Terrebonne is located north of Montreal.
There are three more judicial recounts planned, one in Newfoundland and Labrador and two in Ontario. In all three the Liberals are currently ahead.
In Newfoundland’s Terra Nova—The Peninsulas riding, the difference between leading Liberal candidate Anthony Germain and Conservative party candidate Jonathan Rowe was 12 votes. The recount there is automatic and is to begin Monday.
In the Ontario riding of Milton East—Halton Hills South Liberal Kristina Tesser Derksen is ahead of Conservative Parm Gill by 29 votes. The recount there is also automatic and will begin Tuesday, May 13.
In Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore, a judicial recount was granted after Liberal incumbent Irek Kusmierczyk argued several ballots were “wrongly rejected” after the validation process showed he lost to his Conservative challenger Kathy Borrelli by 77 votes.
