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Tied: New Area-C director to be determined by draw

Annie Silver announced winner by single vote ahead of Wendy Bales before recount called
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The winner of Area-C’s election is still up in the air. An application for a judicial recount has been submitted by chief election officer Jaime Schween to determine if Annie Silver (left) or Wendy Bales (right) is the area’s new director. Preliminary results had shown Silver winning by a single vote.

Despite, Annie Silver’s seemingly narrow win by a single vote Saturday night, the question of who will be Electoral Area-C’s next director is still unanswered.

Fraser Valley Regional District (FVRD) chief election officer Jaime Schween called for a judicial recount of Electoral Area-C votes on Wednesday after finding that a rejected vote for Wendy Bales should have been accepted.

Related: Sts’ailes woman Annie Silver running for director of Area-C ‘Sasquatch Country’

Saturday’s results were delivered past midnight and showed candidate Annie Silver winning the role of director by a single vote – winning 136 votes to opponent Wendy Bales’s 135. That rejected vote – should it be counted during a judicial recount – will see the candidates facing an extremely rare tie situation.

But before a tie is addressed, the judicial recount has to be completed, and according to the Local Government Act must be conducted within 13 days after the close of general voting (Oct. 20, 2018).

If the tie is confirmed, it will be broken by drawing by lot directly after the recount.

Related: Former ‘Sasquatch Country’ director Wendy Bales running again

The Local Government Act describes a process where each candidate’s name is written on separate pieces of paper before being folded and placed in a container “sufficiently large to allow them to be shaken for the purpose of making their distribution random.”

A non-candidate or candidate representative pulls out one paper and declares the candidate drawn the winner.



nina.grossman@ahobserver.com

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