Guernsey politician holds onto seat after election recount

Monday 12 October 2020

The Guernsey politician at the bottom of the polls has managed to hold onto his seat after unsuccessful election candidates demanded a recount.

Deputy Carl Meerveld has retained his place in the next States Assembly following a two-day recount which saw minimal variation in each candidate's number of votes.

Pierre Ehmann, Catherine Hall, Scott Ogier and Garry Collins asked for the recount as they came within 2% of Deputy Meerveld, who finished in 38th place with 6,475 votes in the original count.

However, the recount did not result in a change to the outcome. What it did show, as explained by the Presiding Officer Jurat Stephen Jones, is that the electronic counting machines stood up to scrutiny. 

Pictured: Deputy Meerveld (left), who retained his seat, and Guernsey's Bailiff (right) posting the result of the recount in the Royal Court. 

"The different votes are from a different interpretation of the ballot sheets that were not filled in in a way that the computer was satisfied with," he said. 

"The computer questioned where there was not a clear filling in of that faint oval on the ballot sheet and those hundreds of votes were adjudicated by two people - one of which was a Jurat at all times."

Volunteers led a lengthy 14-hour recount just over a day since they completed the original count, which saw 637,000 votes cast.

"It was a mammoth task because there are 25,000 pieces of paper of a non-normal size," explained Jurat Jones.

"They have all been fantastic and it is part of history - I do think they enjoyed it."

In the recount, Deputy Meerveld scored 6,477 votes, Fergus Dunlop (who was originally in 39th) recorded 6,351, while Mr Ehmann stayed in 40th with 6,336.

The only real difference is that Tina Bury and Simon Fairclough are now tied on 7,394 further up the polls, with Ms Bury retaining 31st on the basis of having more votes the first time round.

The finishing order before and after the recount...