Vote recount reaffirms Davis as winner of Brantford’s mayoral race

An official recount of the mayoral votes in the October municipal election reaffirms that Kevin Davis won the race, narrowly defeating his closest challenger, Dave Wrobel.

The number of votes each candidate received changed slightly following Saturday’s recount: Davis, 9,223 votes (up three votes from the original count); Wrobel, 9,012 votes (down one vote); Ryan Smith, 1,490 votes (up one vote), and John Turmel, 343 votes (no change).

After the election, Wrobel filed an application requesting the court to order a hand recount of the votes. In mid-April, the city issued a news release saying it agreed to hold a recount of the votes cast in person on election day “in order to avoid a lengthy and expensive tax-funded legal process.” A resolution to conduct a recount was reached by both parties, which was confirmed by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on April 12.

A recount of all in-person ballots submitted manually on election day was done at city hall on Saturday morning. The city said the process involved five recount stations set up in the council chamber at city hall, each staffed by one counter and one recorder. Davis and Wrobel were present with scrutineers.

Davis thanked the city election staff for their “diligence and for conducting the election and recount process with integrity.”

“A lot of taxpayer money has been spent on legal fees and election staff costs to learn what we already knew: Our election system is open, transparent, fair and accurate,” said Davis. “That’s because the city employees who manage our elections have the knowledge, experience and skills to do it well and to do it right.”

When it was announced a recount would be done, Wrobel thanked the “Superior Court of Justice for issuing an order to do what should have been done by the city 143 days ago, at a city council meeting held on Nov. 22, 2022.”

At that meeting, Coun. Richard Carpenter brought forward a notice of motion to council, which would have ordered a recount. But the motion wasn’t discussed by councilors after it failed to get enough support to “waive the rules” in order to be heard.

Wrobel said if city council had voted for a recount, it “would have avoided the need for the city to retain an outside law firm and would have saved tens of thousands of your taxpayers’ dollars from being spent on a delay to a legislative right to request a recount.”

On Saturday, Wrobel offered his congratulations to Davis.

“I’d also like to thank the justice for the opportunity to do the recount and commend (city) staff for a very well run, very well organized recount process.”

Davis said when he was re-elected in October, he pledged to work on behalf of all residents to “make our city an affordable, safer and healthier community.”

“Now is the time to build on our successes and confront our problems. We need to let go of issues that have already been resolved and focus that energy on making our community the incredible city we know it can be. Council has been doing that since the election, and it’s what we are going to continue to do.”