Council to rule on recount Nov. 29

BY JASON THOMPSON

If for no other reason than to instill confidence in the voting system, John Caruso has officially filed for a recount of the municipal election results in Ward 12.

According to city clerk and returning officer Angie Hache, at 9:30 pm on the night of the election, Caruso was shown on the city's website to have 1,793 votes while Landry-Altmann had 1,756 with all of the polling stations reporting. Less than half an hour later, the website showed Caruso had 1,529 and Landry-Altmann had 1,586.

Caruso says Hache told him the day after the election the glitch was caused when a memory stick used to transfer data between computers was corrupted, thus changing some of the Ward 12 numbers. When the city released the official election results Nov. 16, they showed Landry-Altmann was still the winner.

He says he doesn't buy the city's explanation.

He's used memory sticks in the past and if they're corrupted, it's impossible to access the data. If the data's corrupted, you wouldn't be able to open it and post it on the Internet, Caruso says.

"I don't believe anything at this point. All I know is that the numbers changed and there's no explanation for it.

"If at the end of the day the numbers stand, then the numbers stand, and we go on with our lives, but I can't rest until I know clearly what happened," Caruso says.

Caruso's motion for a recount will be brought before the  city council at its last meeting Nov. 29. If approved, the recount will take place using three electronic vote tabulators. As the ballots are fed into the tabulators, scrutineers for both candidates will be present to count the votes manually. Both candidates can also have legal representation present at the recount.

"I've had a chat with a couple of councillors . I think this group is a reasonable group, and when they are presented with the request and the reasons behind it, they will proceed in a reasonable manner. I have to believe that," he says.

Caruso says he has not spoken to Landry-Altmann since the election.

Caruso also says that in retrospect, if city council could go back in time, they would have given Jean Robert the recount he was asking for in 2003.