
"The case of a single vote which determined the outcome of a federal election in Canada risks sending the disastrous message to voters that some votes count more than others, says the lawyer of a former MP as a court considers whether to void the controversial election and hold a new vote. Legal teams in Quebec are midway through a three day hearing over whether a single vote and an administrative error truly swayed a recent election in a suburb north of Montreal."
"Bloc Quebecois member Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagne lost the electoral district of Terrebonne to Liberal Tatiana Auguste in the April vote. The Liberals currently hold 169 seats in the House of Commons, just shy of the 172 needed to form a majority. The Bloc Quebecois holds 22 seats. The vote was initially marred by confusion, when Auguste was projected to emerge as the winner after final tallies showed her ahead by 35 votes. But an official validation process on 1 May instead found that Sinclair-Desgagne, first elected in 2021, finished ahead by 44 votes. Under election law, a judicial recount is triggered automatically when the number of votes separating the winner and any other candidate is less than 0.1% of the valid votes cast."
"The recount, completed on Saturday, was overseen by a Quebec court judge. The win was returned to Auguste, with the Liberal candidate receiving 23,352 votes and Sinclair-Desgagne receiving 23,351. Within days, however, Terrebonne resident Emmanuelle Bosse said her vote wasn't included in the final count. Bosse said she voted for Sinclair-Desgagne but her mailed ballot was returned to her due to a postal code error. I wasn't the one who got Elections Canada's address wrong on the envelope, she told CBC's Radio-Canada. Elections Canada glued this label on the envelope. I had nothing to fill. I just had to put my vote in there. Bosse mailed her ballot on 5 April and it was returned to her nearly a month later on 2 May."
Legal teams are holding a three-day hearing in Quebec to determine whether a single mailed ballot and an administrative error changed the outcome of the Terrebonne federal election. Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagne and Liberal Tatiana Auguste exchanged leads after final tallies, a validation process and an automatic judicial recount. The recount returned Auguste the winner by one vote, 23,352 to 23,351. Terrebonne resident Emmanuelle Bosse says her mailed ballot for Sinclair-Desgagne was returned because Elections Canada affixed an address label with a postal code error; the ballot was mailed on April 5 and returned on May 2.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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