Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Serving the Hub of the North since 1960
Volume 58 • Issue 44
Tricks and treats at the TRCC
BEST FRIENDS MEMBERS OF SENIOR HONOUR BAND NEWS PAGE 2
NO CITY TRANSIT FOR AT LEAST TWO WEEKS NEWS PAGE 3
Thompson Citizen photo by Kyle Darbyson The Thompson Regional Community Centre housed a number of different Halloween-themed activities Oct. 27-28, including a costume contest at the Norman Northstars game on Saturday during Vale Night and a colourful free skate at the Gordon Beard Arena on Sunday afternoon, pictured above.
Single rejected ballot will be reviewed by provincial judge, could determine vacant council seat BY KYLE DARBYSON
KYLE@THOMPSONCITIZEN.NET
VALE CONTRIBUTES TO BOREAL DISCOVERY CENTRE NEWS PAGE 6
KING MINERS KNOCK OFF BOMBERS SPORTS PAGE 7
The Oct. 24 municipal election ended on a confusing note in the race for city council, since candidates Andre Proulx and Chiew Chong tied for the eighth and final seat with 1,008 votes apiece. Following a review of the election results, the City of Thompson is saying that a single ballot, which was rejected due to improper marking, could break this tie. Senior election official Dave Turpie said that the ballot was rejected because there were two marks in the mayoral ballot section
the application or as soon as practicable, says the act, which also stipulates that the recount must be conducted in the same fashion as the original count – either by hand or by voting machine tabulation, unless the judge believes that method of counting caused or contributed to the doubtful result. If possible, the recount must occur continuously between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on a weekday. The results must be announced once the recount is completed. If the judge allows the rejection to stand, the tie will remain and the city will proceed with a byelection
where any qualified person, not just Proulx or Chong, could run for that vacant council seat. If the judge decides that the votes for councillors and school trustees should be included in the official tally, it may break the tie if only one of the two candidates who are currently tied are among the council selections, Turpie said. Chong suggested to Winnipeg news outlets that the city could save the cost of having a byelection by having he and Proulx each serving two years of the four-year council term. - with files from Ian Graham
Thompson StudentVote results significantly different from those in the actual election BY IAN GRAHAM
EDITOR@THOMPSONCITIZEN.NET
FORMER THOMPSONITE SUPPORTS HOSPICE WITH QUILTS NEWS PAGE 8
– one of them a solid marking indicating a vote for one of the candidates and the other an “ambiguous” mark, which resulted in the machine that tabulates votes rejecting it for having two votes for mayor. There were also eight properly marked votes for councillors and seven for school trustees. Both Proulx and Chong objected to the ballot rejection, the City of Thompson said in a press release, which meant that Turpie had to apply for a judicial recount under the Municipal Councils and School Boards Elections Act. Recounts must be held within two weeks of
The aftemath of the 2018 municipal election would have looked considerably different if it had been the students of Juniper, Deerwood and École Riverside schools casting ballots, the results of StudentVote show. The tally of the 659 votes by 97 students recorded in the mayoral and council election at the School District of Mystery Lake (SDML) school saw Penny Byer declared
the winner with 33 votes, four more than runner-up Colleen Smook, who received one more vote than Ron Matechuk. In the real election, Smook beat out Matechuk and Byer came third. Both the real and mock election saw Ryan Brady finish a distant fourth, though in the StudentVote tally he received seven votes – a comparatively larger percentage than the less than three per cent of 2,785 ballots he managed in the actual election.
Only two of the candidates elected to council in the real election – Kathy Valentino and Jeff Fountain – were elected by the students at the three schools, though Chiew Chong, who finished tied for eighth in the real election, was also among the winners elected by the students. Valentino led the way among student voters in the council mock election, collecting 46 votes, followed by Bryan Young with 45, Fountain with 42, Ellis with 41, Paul Beck
with 39, Adey Adeyemi with 38, Chong with 36 and Tim Gibson with 32. For the StudentVote school board election, which saw 385 votes combined cast at Juniper and École Riverside schools (Deerwood students did not vote for school trustees), the top seven were Don MacDonald, Jill Quilty, Leslie Tucker, Lindsay Anderson, Michelle Tomashewski, Peter Aarinola and Samantha Scibak. Quilty, Aarinola and Scibak were not elect-
ed in the real election, but Samantha Chartrand and Saima Aziz were. Guido Oliveira, who got the most votes among school trustees in the real election, finished last among the 11 candidates in the student tally. StudentVote is a handson learning program to help students learn about democracy and to practise being active and engaged citizens. Throughout Manitoba, more than 11,000 students participated in the mock election this year.