Recounts granted in 7 ridings

All seven judicial recounts requested following last week's provincial election have been approved.

Recounts will be held for the ridings of Saint John East, Saint John Harbour, Charlotte-Campobello, Carleton-Victoria, Shippagan-Lamèque-Miscou, Fredericton North and Fredericton-Grand Lake.

​Judges ordered the recounts on Wednesday after reviewing affidavit evidence filed in support of the requests — six by the Progressive Conservatives and one by the People's Alliance.

The judges "felt there was more than enough reason to open those ballot boxes to verify and validate the count that was given to Elections New Brunswick," said PC Party president Jason Stephen.

Some of the grounds argued included the slim margins of victory, number of spoiled ballots and other "irregularities."

Electronic vote totals stalled and then reversed before finally coming in hours late on Sept. 22, causing widespread uncertainty about the accuracy of the results.

At least three of the recounts — Saint John East, Saint John Harbour and Shippagan-Lamèque-Miscou — will be held on Thursday morning.

The Charlotte-Campobello and Fredericton-Grand Lake recounts are both slated for Friday at 9 a.m.

Information about the Carleton-Victoria and Fredericton North recounts was not immediately available.

The recount for Saint John East was expected, since Elections New Brunswick results show Liberal Gary Keating defeated incumbent Progressive Conservative Glen Savoie by only eight votes.

Any race decided by 25 or fewer votes is granted a judicial recount without question upon request.

But recounts can also be granted in races decided by more than 25 votes if a judge can be presented with evidence from a "credible witness" that:

- An election officer or vote tabulation machine failed to count, improperly counted or improperly rejected any ballots or made an incorrect statement of the number of votes cast for a candidate, or:

- The resulting officer improperly added up the votes.

There was confusion with the automatic tabulation of the votes counted on election night, due to a problem resulting from the use of an external software to expedite the results from the closed network secure server to media outlets.

However, Elections New Brunswick said it was confident in the technology and last Friday, declared the results official.

14 people voted in wrong ridings

On Wednesday, the elections agency confirmed 14 people voted in the wrong ridings on election night and 12 of them were able to recast ballots.

"I can confirm that for 13 of these 14 voters, it was an error in our geography branch which resulted in them being sent to the wrong riding to vote," spokesperson Paul Harpelle stated in an email to CBC News.

Eight of them were in Moncton, five in Saint John and one in Fredericton, he said.

As soon as the error was discovered, the chief electoral officer Michael Quinn informed the voters and gave them the opportunity to recast a ballot in the appropriate riding, said Harpelle.

Quinn also contacted the candidates in the affected ridings, he said.

The other case involved a woman who incorrectly voted in Fredericton-Grand Lake, said Harpelle. She went to a polling station in that riding and a worker added her to the voters' list without using a street key to confirm she was actually a voter in the riding of Fredericton York.

"In all cases these were voters who lived on streets that straddled two electoral districts," Harpelle said. "All but two were able to recast their ballot."

The province's riding boundaries were redrawn, reducing the number of ridings to 49 this year, compared to 55 in the previous election.

Margins range from 8 to 192

In Saint John Harbour, Liberal Ed Doherty edged out incumbent Progressive Conservative Carl Killen by 71 votes.

In Charlotte-Campobello, newcomer Liberal John Ames beat Tory candidate Curtis Malloch by 192 votes, according to the Elections New Brunswick figures.

The Carleton-Victoria riding saw Liberal Andrew Harvey finish 83 ballots ahead of Tory Colin Lockhart.

And in Shippagan-Lamèque-Miscou, Progressive Conservative deputy premier Paul Robichaud finished 44 votes behind Liberal Wilfred Roussel in the tally posed by Elections NB.

In Fredericton-North, Liberal candidate Stephen Horsman defeated the PC's Troy Lifford by 144 votes.

And in Fredericton-Grand Lake, People's Alliance Leader Kris Austin lost by 26 votes to Progressive Conservative Pam Lynch.

Brian Gallant's Liberals won 27 seats in election, compared to 21 seats for the Progressive Conservatives and a single seat for the Green Party.

Clarification : Dominion Voting Systems did not provide, install or use the external software that caused the problem in transferring results to media outlets on election night.(Oct 02, 2014 6:15 AM)