Results from Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) trustee candidate Robert Pella’s municipal election recount have ruled in favour of incumbent Joseph Martino in Ward 1 Etobicoke North.
The Oct. 24 election saw Pella – a Catholic lector who is involved with his local youth ministry – lose by one vote to Martino, pitting the incumbent’s 2,148 votes against Pella’s 2,147.
Pella believed that he had won the election on the night of Oct. 24, but when he woke up the next morning, his success had changed overnight.
“Last night when I went to bed, I believed I had won the election by seven votes. I was shocked when I woke up this morning and saw it completely reversed,” Pella told the Toronto Star in October.
The hopeful trustee opted for a ballot recount, believing the results of the election to be “down-right suspicious.” Pella said that his initial recount request was denied by the TCDSB, so he decided to seek court action instead.
Though Pella wanted a recount of all ballots, he was amenable to making “concessions.” In a press release, he said that “he was prepared to limit the proposed recount” to both adjudicated and spoiled ballots as well as the additional category of “undervotes,” a term that defines ballots not marked with a vote for trustee.
Pella alleged that although the city was “prepared to allow these categories of votes to be reviewed and recounted,” the TCDSB and Martino “opposed on all fronts” prompting his deferral to the legal system.
Ontario Justice Michael Dineen ultimately ruled in favour of a partial recount but permitted it only for adjudicated ballots – blank or unreadable ballots for which election staff try to determine voter intention – received from the mail and long-term care facilities along with spoiled votes.
Pella believes that if undervotes had been counted, this could have potentially swayed the election to different results.
“I am disappointed that I was denied the opportunity to recount the 258 ‘undervote’ ballots, for which voting machines did not detect a vote for Catholic trustee. A manual review was denied. I believe this further recount would have helped resolve public uncertainty about a one-vote election result,” he said.
Social conservative lobby group Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) is disappointed with the ballot recount outcome, believing that a “balance of power” was at stake in Pella’s recount.
“Ward 1 was the key to maintaining the balance of power for the ultra-liberal, majority bloc of trustees like Martino who advance anti-Catholic causes like Gay Pride Month and the teaching of Gender Fluidity to children,” said Jack Fonseca CLC’s Director of Political Operations. “If the faithful Catholic Pella had been allowed to win that seat, the left-wing hegemony would likely have been lost.”
Pella, unsatisfied with the recount results, remains dubious about future voting in the city.
“The entire process was an expensive recount application, which only examined
one spoiled ballot. Catholic school voters in Ward 1 have been denied some added confidence in the electoral process.”
