A ballot recount has confirmed that Conservative candidate Kathy Borrelli beat the Liberal incumbent Irek Kusmierczyk in an Ontario riding, while results in another Newfoundland recount are expected today.
In the riding of Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore, the judicial recount found that Borrelli beat Kusmierczyk by just four votes. After a three-day recount, the final results showed Borrelli with 32,090 votes, Kusmierczyk with 32,086 votes, and NDP candidate Alex Ilijoski with 4,240 votes.
Borrelli initially beat Kusmierczyk by 233 votes on election night on April 28. However, an initial Elections Canada validation count reduced Borrelli’s lead to 77, which was seven votes short of triggering an automatic recount.
Kusmierczyk, who has been the MP for the riding since 2019, told reporters on May 9 his team of volunteers had identified some ballots that had been mistakenly rejected. They presented their evidence to Justice Ross Macfarlane to request a recount, which he accepted.
A judicial recount, which is conducted by a judge, must take place if the margin of victory for a candidate is less than 0.1 percent of the valid votes cast.
Kusmierczyk thanked his team and supporters in a May 23 post on social media, adding that he “came up a little short” in votes.
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“Four votes to be exact (but who’s counting, ha). The victory is in the fight,” he added. “We showed the fight, and that’s what matters. In the end, that is all we hold in our hands. To serve this remarkable community these last six years has been the honour of my life.”
Newfoundland and Labrador Riding
It is also expected that the results for another recount in the Newfoundland and Labrador riding of Terra Nova-The Peninsulas will be released later in the day. The initial vote tally saw Liberal candidate Anthony Germain win the riding with just 12 votes more than Conservative candidate Jonathan Rowe, which triggered a judicial recount.
When the announcement was made that Germain had triumphed over Rowe by a mere 12 votes on April 29, it marked the closest victory margin in any riding race across Canada at that time. This record has since been surpassed by the Quebec riding of Terrebonne, where the Liberals secured victory by a single vote after a judicial recount.
The Bloc Québécois has said it will challenge the results in the riding following reports that a Terrebonne resident had mailed in a vote supporting the Bloc weeks ahead of the April 28 election, but the ballot was returned to the voter on May 2 because Elections Canada had put the wrong return address on the envelope.
Elections Canada previously told the Epoch Times that five mail-in ballots that were received late at the local office in Quebec’s Terrebonne riding were not able to be counted. Each of the five late ballots contained a postal code error.
Sixteen other ballots were not sent to the local office and were instead returned to the elector because of an addressing error, Elections Canada said. Nine remaining electors who had originally requested a mail-in ballot opted to cast their votes in person instead.
