Tabulation machines make chance of flipping votes remote in recounts

Election candidates who lost tight races Monday night will be able to file for recounts after Friday but seven painstaking judicial reviews of ballots done following the 2014 election have already shown the province's voting machines produce few errors and the chances of flipping even a few votes is remote.

In the closest race under scrutiny, Progressive Conservativecandidate and former teacher Barry Ogden lost the riding of Saint John Harbour to Liberal candidate and city councillor Gerry Lowe by just 10 votes in a race now at the centre of the fight for power between the province's two main parties.

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On Tuesday, PC Leader Blaine Higgs said the party will officially request a recount of votes in the riding once the window for applications opens Friday.That's the day Elections New Brunswickofficially declares individual candidates elected following its final review of results fromMonday's vote.

"It's just to be sure its accurate and fully transparent and the counts are correct," said Higgs.

"Ten (votes) would not be a hill to climb at all."

Few errors found in 2014

But recent history suggests it will be difficult to find enough errors in the automated tabulation of ballots on election night to overcome even a slim 10 vote margin.

InNew Brunswick's 2014 provincial election, parties requested and received seven judicial recountsfollowing election night problems with the reporting of voting machine results.

But few actual errors were discovered when counts were redone by hand over several days by an assortment of New Brunswick judges.

In four of the ridings, vote differences recorded between the two leading candidates on election night stayed the same following the recount.In two ridings it changed by onevote and in one riding it changed by two votes.

The seven recounts involved sorting through more than 51,000 ballots and Elections NB took the handful of errors discovered as confirmation voting machine results canbe trusted.

"The tabulation machines accurately counted the candidates' votes in the manner in which they were programmed," the agency wrote in its review of the 2014 recounts.

Saint John Harbour was the only seat Liberals won within 100 kilometres of Saint John on Monday and keeping it is critical to the party's ongoing quest to hold on to government despite winning one fewer seat than Progressive Conservatives.

Recounts requested

Also likely headed to a recount next week, if a request is filed,will be the riding of Memramcook-Tantramar which Liberals lost to the Green party by 11 votes.

A third riding lost by the People's Alliance to PCs by 35 votes, Southwest Miramichi - Bay du Vin, could also qualify.

Recounts are granted automatically in New Brunswick, if they are applied for in ridings where vote differences are 25 or less.

Recounts in ridings with vote differences larger than 25 can be granted by a judge if an applicant can point to specific errors or mistakes in how the count occurred.

In 2014, because of the election night controversy over voting machine results,hand recounts were granted in ridings with vote differences as high as 192.

Parties have until Oct. 2 to ask for a recount.