Thousands of votes left to count in Memramcook-Tantramar

A judicial recount in Memramcook-Tantramar will continue Friday morning.

Lawyers agreed to a new process to count the votes Thursday evening in hopes of speeding up the counting and not staying through the long weekend.

About 2,700 votes remained to be be checked when court adjourned for the evening around 6 p.m.

There were 8,213 ballots cast in the riding during the provincial election last week.  Green Party candidate Megan Mitton won by 11 votes over Liberal Bernard LeBlanc.

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One spoiled ballot has been contested, said Jean-Daniel Comeau, the lawyer representing LeBlanc.

What to do about that ballot will only be discussed once the rest of the votes are counted. 

There have been several "irregularities" discovered that haven't affected the vote results.

It's annoying to think that that type of mistake by people who were very well-trained happened.- Brigitte Robichaud, Court of Queen's Bench

Each tabulator machine spit out a printed "tape" of results once polls closed Sept. 24. 

Those tapes are supposed to be signed by election officials, though a number of them were not. Another box containing ballots was not properly labelled.

As well, six so-called training ballots were found in a box where they were not supposed to be.

Elections officials speculated the ballots may have been left in the box by mistake after training but before actual voting.

"Why they're there, I can't answer that," Don Duff, returning officer for the Memramcook-Tantramar riding, said.

"It's an irregularity ... but no harm has been done," said Anastacia Merrigan, the lawyer for Mitton.

"It is an irregularity, it's annoying to think that that type of mistake by people who were very well-trained happened," said Court of Queen's Bench Justice Brigitte Robichaud.

A loss for Liberal who held seat

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Mitton received 3,148 votes and LeBlanc, the incumbent in the riding, received 3,137. Progressive Conservative candidate Etienne Gaudet received 1,518 votes, and NDP candidate Hélène Boudreau 410.

LeBlanc and his brother said they requested the recount to ensure the votes were correctly counted. Ballots began to be counted Wednesday around 11 a.m. and continued until 9 p.m.

Counting resumed around 9:30 a.m. Thursday with special ballots delivered after they were examined as part of a recount in Saint John Harbour.

LeBlanc was the only one of the four candidates present for the recount Wednesday morning and Thursday afternoon.
The lawyers agreed to change the counting method late around 5 p.m. Thursday when there were still about 6,000 votes left to count.

Under the first method, once a box was opened a ballot would be pulled out by an election official and handed to a second person read out who received the vote.

Faster system

The ballot was then passed to the judge, who also read the name, flipped the ballot around and showed it to the lawyers seated in front of her.

The new method saw elections officials open a box and separate ballots into piles based on which candidate received the vote. The lawyers then counted those piles. 

Several boxes had already been counted by 5:40 p.m.

"So much faster," said Merrigan, Mitton's lawyer.