The official results from Wednesday’s municipal election are in and there are no changes.
City clerk/solicitor Myron Gulka-Tiechko’s report of the official results stated there were no changes in the numbers that were seen on election night.
“On election night we know the results in terms of who voted for how many candidates and who the winners were, but until we have a chance to double check all the tapes we don’t know how many spoiled ballots there were,” said Gulka-Tiechko. “But the count of actual votes for each of the candidates, for example, is unchanged from Wednesday night.”
Mayor elect Deb Higgins received 5,239 votes while her opponent Fraser Tolmie received 4,645. A total of 10,064 voters participated in the election, which is a bit lower than the 10,184 voters that participated in the 2009 municipal election.
Gulka-Tiechko said since there was no enumeration, there is no exact number available of eligible voters. Based on Census Canada estimates, there were approximately 26,500 eligible voters in the election, which is an increase from the number of eligible voters in 2009. The turnout in the 2012 election was 38 per cent compared to a “hair under 40 per cent” turnout in 2009.
“Weather often makes a bit of an impact. It was (a) fairly cool, windy day so that may have affected some people. We had a fairly respectable turnout in advance polls though, well over 800, which seemed to indicate that there’d be a fairly good turnout,” said Gulka-Tiechko. “As it turns out, our count is fairly close to the number of people who voted in the 2009 election. We’d always prefer to have that higher.”
For the councillors, the four incumbents received the top number of votes. Heather Eby received the most votes at 5,085. Dawn Luhning received 4,838 votes, Don Mitchell received 4,704 and Brian Swanson received 4,692. Newcomers Patrick Boyle received 3,445 votes and Candis Kirkpatrick received 3,190 votes, earning the sixth spot on council with 54 votes more than her closest competitor, Ira Dales.
A total of 4,135 people voted for the ward system referendum and 4,786 voted against it.
For Subdivision 6 of the Prairie South School Division representing Moose Jaw, newcomer Tim McLeod had the highest number of votes at 2,969 followed closely by incumbent Lew Young at 2,900. Brian Swanson was re-elected with 2,625 votes and newcomer Jan Radwanski received 2,280 votes. Incumbent Darrell Crabbe received the fifth spot with 2,105 votes, beating out his closest competitor Barb Owens by 32 votes.
Ron Gleim was re-elected to Subdivision 1 and Al Kessler was re-elected to Subdivision 3. Jackie Jelinski, Colleen Christopherson-Cote and Shawn Davidson were elected by acclamation to Subdivisions 2, 4 and 5 respectively. All three of those are incumbents.
There was no election in the Holy Trinity Catholic School Division and all five trustees were elected by acclamation. The board consists of Patricia Gottselig, Gisele Perrault, Joan Schwinghamer, Joann Blazieko and Helene Chenard.
The PSSD election for Subdivision 6 had a considerably higher number of spoiled ballots than any other election. The subdivision had 92 spoiled ballots, compared to 25 spoiled ballots for the councillors, three spoiled ballots for the ward system and no spoiled ballots for mayor.
“We’re assuming (it’s) because people thought they were voting for six people rather than five which was the case so there were a number of cases where people would’ve over-voted,” said Gulka-Tiechko. “It’s hard to know. It’s hard to be clear on the reasons, but that seems to be logical.”
The inaugural meeting of city council is on Nov. 13 and the new Prairie South School Division board will hold its first meeting on Nov. 6.
