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![West Vancouver mayoral candidate Mark Sager. [PNG Merlin Archive]](https://postmediavancouversun2.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/sager_enviro-jpg.jpg?quality=5&strip=all&w=100&resize=1000%2C750)
In court documents it was alleged that Sager asked for a recount three days after the election, and the district’s chief election officer, Mark Brown, did this by adding up the votes again from each voting station. “He refused to allow for any recounting of the ballots by hand or by machine,” the court file says.
Therefore, the plaintiffs allege, the recount was unreasonable and may not have correctly calculated the total number of valid votes for each candidate. They were seeking “a proper recount” Thursday.
West Vancouver District spokeswoman Donna Powers said Tuesday that Brown was confident that the final tallies in his city were correct: 4,394 votes for Booth and 4,373 for Sager, and 4,942 votes for Sharon Thompson, who won the last seat on council, and 4,922 for Finkbeiner.
“(The ballots) are added up, tallied, recounted and recounted any number of times, double-checked and triple-checked,” she said. “The results of the number of votes cast per candidate are reports that are run from the tabulation machine, so it is basically computer generated.”
Of the 11,818 voters who cast ballots in West Vancouver for the municipal election, 67 didn’t choose a mayoral candidate, so weren’t included in the vote tallies for mayor, Powers said.
-With files from Lori Culbert
Original Post http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/judge-orders-ballot-recount-in-west-vancouver-following-close-election