Mauro still winner after recount

A judicial recount Friday of votes cast in the Oct. 10 election ended up showing Liberal incumbent Bill Mauro defeating NDP candidate John Rafferty in the Thunder Bay-Atikokan riding.
The recount put Mauro ahead of Rafferty by 50 votes, according to the Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal, although the official tally isn’t supposed to be released until tomorrow.
“I guess I’m glad the process is finished,” Rafferty, a former federal candidate locally, said this morning.
“I think that since there were some discrepancies, it was important the people in the riding are assured that the judicial recount is the official version,” he added.
“I think it will put some minds at ease for voters in Thunder Bay-Atikokan,” Rafferty continued, noting these “discrepancies” ranged from the varying numbers between vote counts on Oct. 10 and Oct. 12 to the fact some voters weren’t sure where to vote and some First Nations communities didn’t get to vote at all.
“I think there’s enough discrepancies that Elections Ontario needs to revamp the way they do things,” he remarked. “What really needs to be done is we have to have an actual enumeration, where everybody gets enumerated—that way, everybody will have the opportunity to vote.
“I said it during the election and I’ve said it since—we need a full and proper enumeration.
“I think what happens when you don’t have a full enumeration is you go through a couple of elections and everything gets out of whack,” Rafferty said, noting changes like I.D. rules, or changing people’s polling station location when it’s been the same for 30 years, doesn’t help voter turnout.
Official results on Oct. 12 had shown Mauro ahead of Rafferty by only 41 votes (10,919 versus 10,878), causing the Ontario NDP to ask for a judicial recount on Rafferty’s behalf.
(The initial tally on he night of the election showed a margin of only 16 votes).
Ontario Court Justice Gino Di Giuseppe granted the recount two weeks ago, but then had to decide whether all the votes should be counted or just those from problematic polls.
Last Tuesday, Justice Di Giuseppe ruled a recount of all of the some 30,000 ballots cast in the Thunder Bay-Atikokan riding.