Judge rejects recount demands in TMR election

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A judge of the Court of Quebec rejected the requests for two recounts during the municipal election of Town of Mount-Royal.

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The applications, which were solicited by two candidates who ran for mayor-elect Peter Malouf’s list in the November 6-7 elections, lacked evidence that the ballots were illegally counted or rejected or that the official tally of the returning officer was incorrect, said Judge Sylvain Coutlée. Tuesday.

Recount requests from Team candidates Peter Malouf Sarah Morgan, who lost by 24 votes in District 6, and Robert Tannous, who lost by 13 votes in District 7, argued that there had discrepancies in the number of votes according to the official results list. provided by the VMR returning officer and the lists kept by the representatives of the political party of candidates to monitor the numbers at each polling station.

Coutlée says in his ruling that the second list, used by political parties to see which of their alleged supporters have or have not yet voted, “has no legal value under the law.”

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Known in political jargon as a “bingo card,” he writes, the second electoral list maintained by the parties is not required under the Act respecting elections and referendums in Quebec municipalities. Normally, the law allows parties and independent candidates to have “tellers” at each polling station who are mandated to periodically collect a list of people who have already exercised their right to vote.

Due to the pandemic, the returning officer of TMR provided a voters list for both parties to “facilitate their task” of keeping a register of voters, according to the ruling.

“The sole purpose of this list is to count the voters who have voted and to encourage voters identified by political parties during the election campaign as being favorable to them to exercise their right to vote on the days scheduled for the poll,” writes Coutlée. .

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The judge also dismissed a second argument raised in Morgan’s recount request that the deputy returning officer dispatching the ballots at the end of the advance poll the weekend before the election was removing a handful of ballots from the ballot box at both to count them, rather than removing them and counting them one by one. The person placed the ballots in stacks according to the candidate, he said, and every time ten or so ballots were added to a stack, they counted them one by one. This method led to several manipulations of the ballots, he said, as some would be put back into the ballot box or more would be removed and resulted in some ballots being placed in the wrong pile. The person immediately corrected the errors, the request adds, but the method may have led to confusion and counting errors nonetheless.

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Coutlée ruled that the “could” argument was insufficient to justify a recount because it lacked “objective proof” of the errors.

An Act respecting elections and referendums in Quebec municipalities allows anyone to request a recount provided they have “reasonable grounds to believe that a deputy returning officer, poll clerk or returning officer incorrectly counted or rejected the votes or made an incorrect statement of the number of votes cast in favor of a candidate.

The law does not allow an appeal from a judge’s decision on a recount request.

Citing case law, Coutlée’s decision indicates that a person requesting a recount must not only have good reason to believe that an error was made, but must also have evidence “based on facts and not on speculation. “.

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