OTTAWA—Ontario’s Milton East–Halton Hills South riding has flipped to the Liberals after a vote validation process.
Elections Canada’s validated results indicate that Liberal candidate Kristina Tesser Derksen received 32,130 votes, while Conservative candidate Parm Gill received 32,101 votes–a difference of 29 votes.
The Liberals’ minority government is now back up to 169 seats, while the Conservatives now count 143 seats.
On Thursday, the federal riding of Terrebonne in Quebec went from the Liberals’ win column back to the Bloc Québécois after a postelection vote-validation process.
Milton East–Halton Hills South is a new federal riding created as part of the redistribution process.
It includes parts of the previous ridings of Milton, which was held by the Liberals, and Wellington–Halton Hills, which was held by the Conservatives.
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Preliminary results showed that Gill had won the riding with 32,186 votes, with Tesser Derksen coming in second with 31,888 votes–a difference of 298 votes.
The validated results indicate there were 412 rejected ballots in the riding.
Elections Canada spokesperson Matthew McKenna says the validation process involves a returning officer examining the record of votes counted at polling stations to catch and correct any data entry or calculation errors in a riding.
McKenna says a recount happens automatically if the difference in votes between the first- and second-place candidates is within one one-thousandth of the total number of votes received.
