nfitz
Superstar
Probably wants to save them for next time.
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2023 Toronto Mayoral by-election
- Thread starter SJD_Toronto
- Start date
zang
Senior Member
Kevin Clarke with money.
adma
Superstar
Kevin Clarke with funny money, more like.
For all one knows, if he's up to demanding a recount, he's up to demanding the whole election be re-run.
picard102
Senior Member
Is that an option?
adma
Superstar
Well, Trump's asked for one; so, why not Gong. And he can present a petition from a whole bunch of school children: "We Want Gong!". And just to make it simple and economical, just make it Chow vs Gong, nobody else...
John_Dee
Active Member
Gong (and Sky too) are just making themselves look like a couple of fools. They really should quit while they're behind.
Northern Light
Superstar
Not really, no.
Is there a theoretical possibility? Sure, but that would be determined by a Court, not election officials and would require an extraordinary heap of evidence of irregularities and/or fraud likely to have impacted the outcome.
That latter part is key. The legal standard for that remedy requires evidence not merely of wrong-doing or technical error, but of a reasonable likelihood of a different result.
Which is to say......barring any extraordinary surprises............. not happening.
adma
Superstar
Well, let's put it straight. I was being sarcastic in suggesting a redo of the election. (The last significant example within the GTA that comes to mind was York North in 1990, which Maurizio Bevilacqua won by a landslide for the Libs after a disputed, teeter-totter knife-edge Lib vs PC result in the 1988 federal election was voided by the courts.)
In Chris Sky's case, the calls for a recount are largely performative in the Trump/Kari Lake vein, and it's a popular gesture among crackpot MAGAs (in the '22 GOP primary for the Georgia governorship, Kandiss Taylor refused to concede despite getting *3.42%* of the primary vote). In Gong's case, it's *probably* (though, who knows) more a matter of misunderstanding what recounts are all about--that is, they happen when the race is close enough so that the winner is in doubt, not when a bottom-tier candidate finds his/her numbers questionable, "I put up all these signs, bought all this advertising, even had a Pride float--and *this* is all I got? It doesn't make sense!". Well, maybe it *might* make a difference if there's a bottom threshold for candidate reimbursement--but I haven't heard of recounts conducted on those grounds.
In any case, while one can see Sky's crowd crying "fraud" into eternity (even though for what they were, his numbers were actually fairly *solid*), it seems like Gong made that one tweet asking for a recount and it wilted on the vine, I haven't heard of any followup--so at this point, he'd probably be better off bracing himself for any questions from the City about his election spending...
christiesplits
Senior Member
turini2
Active Member
From today's Star - holy crap!
adma
Superstar
Which contradicts my earlier speculation that Bailao might have done better in the advance than all those non-Mainstreet pollsters suggested.
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
Well, maybe another way to see it is Tory finally decided to get involved after internal polls (not the public ones, which are kind of off mark) shows that Bailao is lagging. Not getting involved might have been the default position - appearances, promises and general ethics goes out the window once the preferred candidate is losing.
Now when's the "advance voting is fake" crowd going to show up and make noise?
AoD
adma
Superstar
A mushy-middler like Bailao doesn't inspire it the way that a Ford-endorsed firebrand might. Which is why the main "rigged election" rhetoric is coming from Chris Sky way at the bottom--maybe he *really* wants the brownie points for finishing ahead of Bradford...
zang
Senior Member
Well, if we’re going the conspiracy route, maybe it was Bailão who pushed Tory for the endorsement. Who knows what she might’ve found out about Tory as deputy mayor. Or if there are Tory-related reasons she decided not to run for council in this past election…
adma
Superstar
However, I *will* say that I noticed via Twitter a whole bunch of people defensively *responding* to a matter-of-fact, statistical-reportage "Bailao won on e-day, Chow won in the advance" post as if it *were* bait for the anti-Chow "advance voting is fake" crowd. Which suggests that there's a whole lot of people out there who are truly statistically incurious-to-the-point-of-dense to the point of missing the point of that kind of shared data, or oversurmising some kind of "political agenda" behind that kind of sharing--almost like a naive pro-Chow counterpart to pro-Trumpers who only recognize two statistics: winning an election "by a lot", or an election being "rigged".
"Gee, numbers and statistics make my head hurt. And those who use them a lot are trying to pull a fast one on me."