Liberal Tim Louis wins Kitchener-Conestoga
Posted Oct 22, 2019 03:36:00 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Canadian Press has declared Liberal Tim Louis the winner in Kitchener-Conestoga, which was later confirmed by Elections Canada.
He defeated Conservative incumbent Harold Albrecht, who was seeking a fifth term.
It means all five ridings in Waterloo Region now belong to the Liberals, as Bardish Chagger, Raj Saini, Marwan Tabbara and Bryan May were all re-elected on Monday evening.
The results in Kitchener-Conestoga were delayed on election night due to an issue with special ballots and only confirmed at 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday.
The regional media advisor with Elections Canada chalks it up to human error.
“Absolutely, clerical human error. A piece of paper wasn't filed correctly,” Rejean Grenier told The Mike Farwell Show on 570 NEWS.
Elections Canada says a document that is supposed to be kept by the polls' returning officer, breaking down the number of votes each candidate received and the number of rejected ballots, was accidentally sealed inside the ballot boxes.
The problem was made worse when the returning officer was unable to reach the deputy returning officer, who also had a copy, until Tuesday morning.
Elections Canada says the five polls have now been reported and their votes did not change the outcome of the race, though the agency did not provide updated numbers on his margin of victory.
The delay also kept Louis up into the early morning hours on Tuesday, admitting he got just one hour of sleep the last two nights.
He told Kitchener Today with Brian Bourke on 570 NEWS it was almost a “mirror image” of what happened four years ago – Louis lost to Albrecht by just 251 votes.
“In 2015, I watched those numbers, steadily and it was a bit emotional to do that. So maybe as a bit of a defence mechanism I didn't really look at the numbers every few minutes like people were doing … I could tell by the crowd reaction. I could tell when people cheered, something was going in my favour, when it was super somber things weren't going well … Even though I tried to dissociate myself and say 'look in the end it's going to work itself out' – it was impossible to do, you just get caught up in that wave.” Louis explained.
He says he is anxious to set up an office in the riding and to hear from people directly, “I don't want that to stop. Those conversations we've had for the past number of years. To go out in the communities, to go out to these events, it's the best way to find out what's important to people … really looking forward to keeping that going.”
with files from The Canadian Press
