Incumbent Côte Saint-Luc mayor Mitchell Brownstein to request recount after losing by a single vote

Longtime Côte Saint-Luc Mayor Mitchell Brownstein will be asking for a recount of Sunday’s election results after updated figures showed he lost by a single vote.

Sunday night’s unofficial results had Brownstein, the incumbent, defeating challenger David Tordjman by 50 votes.

But revised figures published Monday by Élections Québec, which were provided by the City of Côte Saint-Luc, showed Brownstein’s tally drop by 38 votes and Tordjman’s increase by 13 – putting the incumbent one vote behind.

“It’s been a bit of a roller-coaster,” Tordjman told CityNews. “The initial numbers were one thing and the validated official numbers are tremendous. The winning by one vote just goes to show how important every single vote is.”

Brownstein’s campaign Chair, Lawrence Bergman, told CityNews in a statement that updated vote tally “does not match our figures.”

“As such we will be asking for a recount and will not have any further statement until our request for recount is heard,” Bergman said.

The new numbers show Tordjman received 4,196 votes to Brownstein’s 4,195. Voter turnout in Côte Saint-Luc was 37 per cent, with 229 ballot papers rejected.

“I’m fully willing to accept and participate in a recount if Élections Québec authorizes and recognizes that there is a need,” Tordjman said. “It’s part of the process and I recognize that.”

Political analyst and former city councillor Justine McIntyre says there is a “feeling of instability.”

“You don’t know who’s governing the borough,” McIntyre said. “And I think also for the borough councillors, they don’t know who their mayor is going to be.

“It’s always a terrible, terrible situation to be in when there’s only one vote separating victory from defeat.”

Côte Saint-Luc residents reacted to the one-vote election win on Tuesday.

“If anybody didn’t get out and vote, and wanted to vote for Mitchell, then they’re going to feel bad at this point,” one person said.

“Let them do a recount and know for sure one way or the other,” said another.

“We do need a unifier now because it means there’s a split, and a split is never good for the population,” added a third.

Brownstein has been mayor of Côte Saint-Luc, a demerged municipality on the island of Montreal, since 2016.

Tordjman served as city councillor for Côte Saint-Luc’s District 6 from 2017 to 2021.

Other close calls

Côte Saint-Luc wasn’t alone in producing a razor-thin margin on election night.

In Lachine, the borough mayor’s race was decided by just 26 votes, with Julie-Pascale Provost edging out incumbent Maja Vodanovic.

In Verdun, Céline-Audrey Beauregard defeated Ensemble Montréal’s Geneviève Desautels by 45 votes.

Some city councillor races were tight, too. Emilie Brière in Côte-des-Neiges won by six votes; Richard Bélanger in Jacques-Bizard won by 11 votes; and Claude Pinard in Saint-Jacques won by 13 votes.

Some say low voter turnout – 37 per cent city-wide, one of the lowest in half a century – may have contributed to the nail-biting results.

“I think when voters don’t show up, then you end up getting lower numbers, and the margins are much smaller,” McIntyre explained.

“Probably someone was too lazy to go out and vote or just didn’t think that their vote was going to make a difference,” Montrealer Barbara said.