After a vote recount, Mike Jamieson is the new councillor for Calgary’s Ward 12.
Initial counting showed Jamieson ahead of closest competitor, Sarah Ferguson, by 29 votes. Ferguson asked for a recount, which showed Jamieson was actually ahead by 59 votes, with the final official counts at electionscalgary.ca of 6,865 votes for Jamieson and 6,806 for Ferguson.
The Calgary election was fraught with processes that raised the ire of voters, not the least of which was the return to paper ballots and the elimination of electronic tabulators, a mandate of the Alberta Government, which led to long lineups at many polling stations.
After the Jamieson/Ferguson recount, former Alberta Justice Minister Jonathan Denis, a member of Jamieson’s campaign team, questioned the recount process as well.
“First, we were told the recount could take place within five days after the preliminary results were released, which was Tuesday, so we could have had the recount up until Sunday (Oct. 26) to be completed,” Denis told Western Standard.
“But, we were advised, with no scheduling accommodations or anything, at 10:28 Wednesday night that the recount would take place at nine o'clock, Thursday morning, which gave us very little time to assemble Mike’s team to monitor the process.”
“What followed was a huge, last-minute overnight effort by our team to assemble scrutineers, volunteers, and a legal team to make sure the recount went fairly.”
Denis encourages the city to look into and review its election processes because not every candidate could have put a team together overnight with less than the required amount of notice.
He added the process meant Jamieson’s team wasn’t permitted to see all of the ballots, only the ones related to them.
“Again, in the interest of our democracy, I am just hoping that the city looks at some better election processes that are more accommodating to all candidates.”
“We're obviously happy with the results, but at the same time, Mike has a lot of support. Not everybody would be able to go and assemble a team like that with such short notice.”
Denis did not dislike the elimination of tabulators.
“I definitely think the process needs to be improved, but the one thing I'm happy about is paper ballots are still the best way for security to do a recount,” he said. “If they ever brought back the tabulators, they should never replace paper ballots. So perhaps you can look at bringing back the tabulators for paper ballots, but there's nothing that should ever replace paper ballots. It is still the most secure system where we can understand a voter's intention.”
The A Better Calgary Party , of which Jamieson is a member, said in a statement after the recount, “With Mike on council, there will be six solid conservatives and two others who lean conservative, providing the eight votes necessary to get important things done at city hall.”