HawthorneVillager.com

They give explicit instructions on how to mark a ballot so that no one has to "understand voter intent"

I assume that is why the municipal law says if original vote was by machine, recount has to be the same way.

I don;t want anyone to try and justify what the "intent" of a voter was - only the actual correctly marked ballots.

The recount would be simply feeding the same ballots through the same type of machine again (although not the same identical machine that read them the first time).

The cost to do that isn't known yet but should be known by end of day thursday. From the description of just putting the ballots through the machine again you'd think it would be low cost but who knows (not me). I saw the machines closely on election day, they seemed fairly straight forward.

Hoping the recount would show that our technology / machines work. It would be the first time we've done a real-world test like this, although I'm assuming all this was properly tested/calibrated before but it's never safe to make assumptions so this would be a real world test.

With it being 14 votes difference, the what-if scenario begs the question what if you put the ballots through the machine again and it comes up with different totals.....then what? Hoping that doesn't happen and the technology just works properly as it should.

why did you guys agree to do this without knowing the cost? what if its $10,000 or something?

I think its part of our democratic rights and due process...

Otherwise we'd be.. Russia.

Well, at least then the smokes and booze would be cheap.

the councillors voted yes to it. its not an automatic thing if people want a recount.

And where did you see this?

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They haven't voted on anything yet.
6 councillors petitioned to have a count after Sharon made a request - which is what is required to initiate the process. They had a discussion, the question of costs were raised. There is a special council meeting on being held Monday November 10th to vote on it when the information is known.

Which 6 made the petition?

As far as I know, no one has agreed to it. If that does or doesn't occur it would happen at the special council meeting.

There is no way that this would cost $10,000 as you suggest. But even if it does, that is the cost of living in a democracy. Don't be cheap. Don't think and act like a Price Matcher.

The machines this year said they validated the cards (eg legible, one vote per section) so it seems unlikely a recount will make a difference

I agree with the request for a recount.

Only for the sake of democracy and validating the electoral machines would I agree, because you never know and a machine is only as good as the person programming it.

That said, assuming the results are valid, perhaps the residents of the Ward don't see the incumbent's contribution to the growth and development of the town. Relying on experience only matters if the experience is relevant to the current challenges of the town, not the rural experience of its past. I can tell you, when I showed up to the public input session on the town's master plan held on Tuesday, September 23 at the Milton Sports Centre and how the 2 new community centers would be build, I did not see the incumbent there but I did see the winner, Robert Duvall. Perhaps 14 people noticed Robert's activism and desire to shape a more livable Milton.

Not a single vote changed in the Ward 1 recount. Duval confirmed.

http://www.insidehalton.com/news-story/ ... -s-ward-1/