‘Election was badly run’: Judge approves recount for mayor of Dorval, as challenger alleges ‘anomalies’

The thousands of ballots cast in the Dorval mayoral race will be recounted, a Quebec judge has ordered, as both municipal parties involved offer differing versions of the Nov. 2 election night.

On Tuesday, a judge ruled in favour of Démocratie Dorval, whose candidate Umberto Macri (2,726 votes, 48 per cent) was defeated by incumbent mayor Marc Doret of Action Dorval (2,951 votes, 52 per cent) by 225 votes.

The judge ruled in favour of the recount request by siding with Démocratie Dorval’s first of 12 points – that count sheets were not provided to all the party’s representatives. Count sheets show who voted, how many votes a candidate received, or how many votes were spoiled.

Maria R. Battaglia, the official agent of Démocratie Dorval, says the judge heard all 12 arguments but stopped at the first one because “the breach was so egregious.”

The judgment reads the court found an “existence of irregularities in the vote-counting process and in the preparation of the count sheets. A reasonable person, under the same circumstances, would have grounds to believe that the ballots or the vote count records were treated unequally.”

Mayor Doret called that decision a “technicality.”

“Supposedly the law says that they (count sheets) should be given to each representative of the party, and the other party claims they didn’t receive them all,” Doret said. “I mean, I didn’t receive them all either. But the counts have been proven to show that the election results are the same, that was the whole court case that we had earlier this week.

“It’s on a technical matter. He based it on an old ruling that was made many years ago. Again, I’m not gonna judge the wisdom of the judge himself; I just accept it for what it is. I’m fairly convinced that my election will stand.”

‘A lot of anomalies’

But Battaglia, a lawyer by trade who represented Démocratie Dorval in court, says there were several other points brought forward that she believes would have also resulted in a ruling in favour of a recount.

She says candidates or representatives for the party were not allowed in the basement of Dorval’s Sarto-Desnoyers community centre, where the votes were being counted, until after the advance votes were tallied.

“Each of my 10 representatives in those two rooms downstairs all told me the same thing: the vote (count) had started, the boxes had been opened, the shield has been removed.

“Our candidate in District 6 walked in and there was already a pile of votes for his opponent running in the same district. And the minute he walked in, he was shocked that suddenly people were taking out his name, but before he walked in… And why was he made to walk in late? He was a candidate.”

Battaglia says in some cases, the party’s representatives were not allowed to look at the ballots being counted. In one instance, she claims the husband of a candidate asked to see a ballot on three separate occasions and was allegedly told by security: “If you don’t be quiet, you’re gonna be asked to leave.”

Security guards were also reportedly walking around with ballot boxes, taking them from one room to another.

“By the time we met with many of our representatives that were present, we realized that there were a lot of anomalies,” Battaglia told CityNews.

Unopened ballot boxes?

The official agent of Démocratie Dorval says on election night, when the online count stopped, it showed 64 of 67 ballot boxes had been opened.

Battaglia believes at least one ballot box was unopened on election night, based on something one of her affiants told her two days later.

“This young lady came to me, and she said that she was very concerned because while she was in the room and working on her ballot box, she said, ‘but what about that one? Can I stay to have that open?’ And she was told that it was none of her concern … and that a security guard came and took it. And she said, ‘well, where are you taking it?’ And she was told it was none of her concern,” Battaglia said.

The lawyer also claims there was a mix-up with another ballot box, and the votes from “two different boxes were put into one.”

“That’s why there is no 67th ballot box, it’s only 66,” Battaglia said. “And in fact, they told the court that for the recount, there’s only going to be 66 boxes.”

When asked about the claim that one or multiple ballot boxes had gone “missing,” Doret said that was disproved by the judge. “That’s not why we’re having a recount,” he said.

“I understand what people were talking about; there’s confusion about a polling box that was used for people to vote at home, which was an accepted practice,” Doret explained.

“There’s this rumour that there’s a missing box and there’s no missing box that existed. It was resolved the next morning of the elections with discussion with the DGEQ (Directeur général des élections du Québec) and it’s fully compliant, as per their analysis. If people are telling you that, they’re just continuing to perpetuate something that has been not accepted as a reason for a recount by the judge.”

An Élections Québec spokesperson did not respond directly to CityNews’ questions about any possible abnormalities with the vote-counting process.

A council meeting originally scheduled for this month has been postponed because of the recount for mayor, a spokesperson for the City of Dorval said.

Recount for councillor rejected

Earlier Tuesday, the same judge who would later rule in favour of a recount at the mayoral level ruled against the request by Doret’s Action Dorval team for a recount of a city council race where the challenger of Démocratie Dorval was elected by five votes.

In District 3, challenger Linda Jun Lu defeated incumbent Robert (Bob) Le Sage 452 to 447. Twenty-three of the 922 total votes cast – 2.5 per cent – were rejected.

“Recounts are not automatic,” Doret said. “You have to make a point. You have to explain your reasoning for a recount. We felt that with the unusually high amount of rejected votes across the city, it would be fair and just to just evaluate that everything was done as per the letter of the intent of Élections Québec. I can’t speak to why the judge went that way, I can simply respect his decision.”

Battaglia claims Action Dorval’s request was denied because the party could not show there was an error in counting or a breach of any of the articles.

“Their allegations only alleged that there were too many people, it was crowded, that people were talking,” she said. “We had those allegations too, but that is not enough to ask for a recount.”

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‘Vindictive and potentially intimidating’

Ahead of both judgments Tuesday, Doret issued a statement on Facebook about the legal challenge.

Doret called Démocratie Dorval’s recount request for mayor, which he claims was made two days after Action Dorval’s recount request in District 3, “vindictive and potentially intimidating.”

While Doret acknowledged his Facebook post may have been written “out of frustration,” he did not back down from the allegations of “intimidation” on the part of Démocratie Dorval.

“There was a lot of intimidation going on in this election campaign,” Doret told CityNews.

“I’m gonna tell you that on reflection… I ran in 2005, I ran in many elections since, and I’ve never seen anything like we witnessed in Dorval in terms of what was said on social media, how people acted door to door.

“We tried to run a very positive, very upbeat campaign, and we tried very hard to not get tangled in the weeds. I’m proud of that. I’m proud of my team for doing that. But at the end of the day, for as positive as we were, I found the other team to be very negative.

“I think their goal was always to challenge the elections, no matter what the outcome was.”

Démocratie Dorval told CityNews those allegations are simply not true.

“We ran a clean campaign. Our campaign was run on what we believe, and that was integrity. And we really did what we have to do to make the people of Dorval know who our team was. We’re a brand-new party. We did everything in less than three months.

“A group of people decided that there had to be a change in Dorval. We went out there, we did make a difference. We did elect three people, we’re very proud of our three people. We’re dissatisfied with the way the election was run. We’re happy with the decision of the court who vindicated us and confirmed that the election was badly run, and that opened the door to a recount.”

Regardless of the result of the recount, Doret feels the people of Dorval are the ones suffering the most through this situation.

“On both sides, the trust of the people has been diminished,” he said.

“Credibility is lost across the board. Whether you like Mr. Macri or whether you like Mr. Doret and their teams, at the end of the day, it’s the residents that suffer the most in that they’re not getting the true information.”