Validation process flips Ontario riding from Conservative to Liberal, automatic recount triggered

A riding in Ontario is going red after a vote validation process showed a Liberal candidate won by fewer than 30 votes. CTV's Krista Simpson reports.

A riding in Ontario is going red after a vote validation process showed a Liberal candidate won by fewer than 30 votes.

Elections Canada released validated results, showing Liberal candidate Kristina Tesser Derksen won the riding of Milton East-Halton Hills South with 32,130 votes. Her Conservative candidate rival, Parm Gill, received 32,101 votes.

Initially, preliminary unofficial results from election night suggested Gill had won the riding with 32,186 votes, but the validated results indicated there were 412 rejected ballots in the riding.

“I described it to someone recently as I feel like I’ve been on a week-long bungee jump,” Tesser Derksen told CTV News during an interview Friday night. “It’s just been up and down and up and down and up again.”

The validation process involves a local returning officer combing through the data provided by each polling station to find potential errors.

However, the process is not over yet.

An official recount is automatically triggered when the difference between the first- and second- place candidates are within one one-thousandth of the total number of ballots received. That process is expected to start within the next few days.

“It’s a slim margin, it’s 29 votes. [I’m] cautiously optimistic, but it could still go both ways. Right now I am the winner, I am the MP-elect, however we have to wait for that process to play out,” Tesser Derken said.

Despite the close race, Tesser Derksen said she is focused on working with the other parties if the results of the official recount confirm she will be the MP for Milton East-Halton Hills South.

“Some people think a minority government is actually more healthy because it requires more dialogue across party lines, which I believe in. I believe that we need to put some effort into changing the civil discourse between parties in this country. There has been a lot of divisive rhetoric and I want to work toward building bridges with my colleagues in other parties,” she said.

No matter what the results of the recount are, Tesser Derksen said there is an important lesson to be learned.

“This is a really perfect example of what we hear all the time but sometimes we don’t take seriously – every vote counts,” she said.

If the results are confirmed during the recount, the Liberals will have 169 seats, three shy of a majority government.

With files from The Canadian Press