For a while, the razor-thin election-night outcome in Terrebonne, a riding just north of Montreal, struck many Canadians as an example of the system working as it should: Liberal Tatiana Auguste was initially declared the winner by just 35 votes; standard validation procedures flipped the riding to the Bloc Québécois by 44 votes; and then a judicial recount, triggered automatically because the outcome was so close — less than 0.1 per cent of the turnout — found Auguste had won by a single vote.
“Aha, see, every vote does count!” was a popular sentiment on social media. It was Christmas come early for the “turnout nerds,” as my colleague Colby Cosh calls those irritating people who insist you have a “civic duty to vote,” no matter how uninterested or disillusioned or pig-ignorant you might be. ---More...
