As much as it was a surprise to see Conservative Rahim Jaffer lose to NDPer Linda Duncan in Edmonton, it was perhaps more of a surprise to see two Liberals lose in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. Liberal Whip Karen Redman lost to Conservative Stephen Woodworth in Kitchener Centre and tonight, Elections Canada announced the results from the judicial recount in the riding of Kitchener-Waterloo and it continues to be a downer for Liberals in the Waterloo region.
While the results narrowed, Liberal Andrew Telegdi is still out and Conservative Peter Braid is still in. On election night, Braid was up by 48 votes. After the recount, he is declared the winner by 17 votes or 21,830 to 21,813.
As Alice notes: “…17 votes represents a margin of less than 0.0% of the valid ballots cast (17/60534 = 0.02808339115207982290943932335547% of the vote, to be precise)”. She concludes that that makes Kitchener-Waterloo the closest race for 2008, pending the outcome of the drama in Vancouver South.
And right now there are seventeen ambivalent Liberal supporters in Kitchener who are really wishing they had been a little more decisive that day.
It seems there's not much interest about the results in Vancouver South, except among a group of bloggers:
http://www.bluelikeyou.com/2008/11/01/vancouver-south-re-recount-continues/#comments
From Wiki:
“After the official recount, Dosanjh's margin of victory dropped to 22 votes. However, Young is appealing the results on the basis that only 28 of 184 ballot boxes were counted during the recount.”
So what does “recount” actually mean? With that slim a margin, shouldn't all ballots be recounted?