Thu Parmar wins Ward sipiwiyiniwak after a recount

Apparently Thu Parmar just won the election.

She gained 600 votes on the recount and has beaten Darrell Friesen.

Candidate	Slate	Votes	%
Thu Parmar		6,667	30.36
Darrell Friesen	Better Edmonton	6,040	27.50
Giselle General		4,850	22.08
Danny Heikkinen		2,055	9.36
Roger Kotch		1,055	4.80
Bassam Fares		676	3.08
Ken Ropcean	PACE	619	2.82

On election night, Friesen was ahead by 6.

So that's pretty cool, I guess.

What's not cool is that apparently we can't trust our elections.

It looks like the explanation is her vote total increased by about the amount that Roger Kotch's decreased. And alphabetically, they're similar on where they'd appear on the ballot.

So probably what happened is someone gave a bunch of Thu votes to Roger Kotch, and then they caught it on the recount.

That kind of means that people like Rajah Maggay, who lost by, you know, fewer than 800 votes, might be wanting to think about asking for a recount.

Anyway, have a good day, have a good life. Congratulations, Thu.

And, like, as an aside, I don't see how, politically, it's possible to not do a recount of every vote in the city. Whether that happens tomorrow of Edmonton Elections' own volition or after a court battle, I don't know.

This seems like it's gonna get real messy.