vancouver south recount

According to ITQ’s tireless source on the ground, the recount is over and after a full ballot-by-ballot recall, Ujjal Dosanjh has held onto his seat with a 20 vote margin. Whoo! Go democracy! Does everybody feel a comforting sense of closure now?

There was a brief moment of panicked confusion at the ITQ RecountWatch desk this morning after Commenter (and blogger in her own right) Joanne noticed that Elections Canada had upgraded the status of the Vancouver South recount to “completed”. But if you check the date, it seems that those are the results as initially certified by the judge on October 24, 2008 — the day of the original (and, at the time, ostensibly finalized) “partial” recount of rejected and special ballots (plus a dozen or so handpicked ballot boxes) that sparked the original controversy over whether the Conservative candidate, Wai Young, had, in fact, conceded, and eventually led the judge to reverse his decision and go back to counting the remaining ballots by hand.

That’s what I heard from someone who was supposed to attend today’s hearing, at least — you know, the one in which Wai Young and a Conservative Party lawyer were going to appeal the decision to suspend the count last week. Apparently, the judge took the initiative to restart the count before the lawyers had even had the chance to make their arguments, so it’s back to the ballot-by-ballot examination tomorrow.

I wish I had more of an update, y’all, but this is turning out to be a fiendishly tricky tale to untangle. I wasn’t able to speak to Ray Leitch, who is now referring media inquiries to the national office in Ottawa — specifically, to Ryan Sparrow, who would only state that the party “is disappointed that not all the ballots were counted during the recount” and will “explore various options in the next few days” to make sure that happens. “Regardless of the results, all we would like to see is that every vote in Vancouver South has been counted.” But let’s look on the bright side for a moment – he replied to my email! Promptly, even!

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