PQ drops Champlain recount, Conservative win stands

The Conservative Party of Quebec’s Adriana Szalontai remains the elected member for Champlain after a judicial recount ended Oct. 22 with the Parti Québécois candidate abandoning his challenge, Élections Québec said.

The Court of Quebec recount at the Trois-Rivières courthouse set Szalontai’s margin over the PQ’s René Branchaud at 186 votes, down from 191 in the original count. Élections Québec said the final tally was 12,690 votes for Szalontai and 12,504 for Branchaud.

The court recounted 67 of the riding’s 191 ballot boxes, the ones where irregularities had been raised. After those boxes were done, Branchaud withdrew his request, and the parties agreed to accept the original count for the remaining 124 boxes, Élections Québec said. The court then made the results official.

The PQ had asked for the recount after the Oct. 5 election, saying ballots went missing during the count. The party said about 80 ballot papers were missing from one box and around 30 from another. Judicial recounts are normally granted when the margin is less than one-thousandth of the votes cast, which was not the case in Champlain, but the court agreed to order one.

Szalontai had called the recount a normal democratic right and said she respected the process, according to earlier reports.

The result leaves the Conservatives with a seat that the PQ had hoped to win as it works to build on its minority government. The PQ gained a 60th seat in Vachon after a separate recount, and Conservative Leader Éric Duhaime has said his new members will make mistakes as they settle in.

The Elections Quebec release and L’Hebdo Journal in Trois-Rivières both reported the outcome. Élections Québec noted that only two judicial recounts in the province’s history ended in ties, in Champlain in 2003 and Saint-Jean in 1994, and both led to new elections.

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