Tight race at the top

By Miriam King Bradford Times
The election in BWG was expected to attract a high voter turnout, with bitter Mayoral and Deputy Mayoral races.
It was also supposed to wrap up by about 9 p.m., with the ballots cast in 7 polling stations being tabulated by machine, instead of by hand.
Instead, a total of 7,144 votes were cast – 659 votes fewer than in 2006.
And it was well past midnight before the unofficial results from Ward 3 were received, with a Council seat and the Deputy Mayor’s position hanging in the balance.
It was a tight race at the top. While it was clear early on that incumbent Mayor Doug White would defeat Jim Corneau – the official results gave White 3,897 votes, to Corneau’s 3,247 – only 77 votes separated incumbent Deputy Mayor Dennis Roughley and challenger Rob Keffer, with Ward 3 still to be counted.
Election officials blamed the delay on problems with the new ballot tabulators. Ward 3 ballots had to be taken to the Administration offices on Dissette St., and run through another machine, one at a time.
It was almost 12:30 a.m. before the results came in – giving Keffer the win, by over 280 votes. Rob Keffer had 3,626 ballots; Roughley had 3,342, ending a 22-year career on Council.
Ward 3 voters also turfed another incumbent, John McCallum – electing Gary Lamb as their Ward Councillor. Lamb received 295 votes, newcomer Lou Mosna received 202 ballots, while McCallum ran a distant third, with 130 votes.
Other incumbents fared better at the polls. In Ward 2, Councillor Del Crake was returned to office – but by a margin of only 57 votes, over Stephen Dykie. Crake had 494 votes, Dykie 437, and Libby Knights, 346.
Ward 5 veteran councillor Ron Simpson handily defeated both challengers – with 587 ballots, compared to 257 for Brad Ferreira and 185 for Seamus Webster.
In Ward 1, Raj Sandhu easily defeated Dave Minnema and Angela Wright. Sandhu received 431 votes, to Minnema’s 304, and 76 for Wright.
And in Ward 4, Carl Hordyk beat Meade Helman, 611 to 377.
With acclamations in Wards 6 (James Leduc) and 7 (Peter Dykie Jr.), 5 out of 9 members of Council will be returning to office – preventing the final meetings of the current Council from being “lame duck.”
“It’s a very interesting election,” said Dykie Jr., who admitted to being “very nervous to see what kind of team we’ll have for the next four years… I don’t want to see a Council that’s non-productive. I don’t want to see us go back 10 years.”
At the same time, he had praise for all of the candidates who put their names forward, and for the incumbents who dedicated long hours to the job. “You give your life, you give your family time… Sometimes [the voters] can be thankful, sometimes they are not thankful.”
Dykie said that he would have liked to see a higher voter turnout, especially since there were so many concerns about taxes and growth. But now that the shouting is all over, he said, “now we put together a team and move forward – set our priorities, and do the best we can.”
Town Clerk Patricia Nash explained that the problem with the tabulators had nothing to do with the actual tabulation of the votes. “The feeders weren’t allowing the ballot to be entered,” Nash said. “There’s no discrepancies with the results…. There were no inconsistencies. It was strictly the feeder.”
The Ward 3 results eventually had to be entered using “manual back-up systems,” she said.
The Town leases the tabulators for the election. Asked if the municipality would be getting a refund, she said, “Oh, most definitely.”