Etherington’s one-vote Kitchener Ward 9 win survives recount (Ontario)

[UrbScotty]

Source: The Record

After more than four hours and close to 4,000 ballots, it came down to the same amazing result.

Journalist Frank Etherington had defeated university lecturer Debbie Chapman for the Ward 9 council seat by a single vote.

“Everywhere I go, I’ve been meeting dozens and dozens of voters, and every one of them says to me, ‘It was my vote that won you the election,’ ” Etherington said. “I tell them, ‘Yes, it was your vote.’ They were all responsible.”

The recount, which took place at Kitchener City Hall Wednesday morning, returned the exact same number of votes cast for each candidate – 1689 for Etherington, 1688 for Chapman.

Read more: http://news.therecord.com/News/Local/article/805654

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One vote does matter!

[joshcryer]

1. That's absolutely amazing.

Every single person who voted can legitimately claim that their vote was the one that did it. Awesome.

[rpannier]

2. What I found most interesting was the disabled man who called for a ride

and his wife took him to vote.

[Fly by night]

3. Kitchener, Ontario, CANADA.

Figures. It damned sure wasn't Kitchener, Tennessee.

We vote on vapor here.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. And to think most of our elections have NO WAY to do a recount ...

copying the same old numbers out of the DREs is not a recount. It is just repeating a mistake.

[UrbScotty]

6. Depends on where you live...

Where I live, we have paper ballots, so it's pretty easy.

But yes, that's another downside to electronic voting.

[Posteritatis]

5. I've seen margins of a couple dozen to a couple hundred in ridings around here regularly, too

Part of the reason I'm happy with my franchise is that, even when my candidate doesn't win, I can see from the vote distribution that I at least had a reasonable say in things.

Of course, if I lived in Alberta or something my song might change...