People line up outside Pierrefonds Community High School to vote for their preferred nominee for the federal Liberal candidature in the Pierrefonds-Dollard riding.West Island Gazette

The Liberal nomination meeting in the PierrefondsDollard riding ended late Sunday evening without a winner.

The meeting began at Pierrefonds Community High School with brief speeches by six nominees, Sunday at 10 a.m. Voting took place from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Of the 9,000 eligible voters, 3,200 Liberal members turned up to vote. The line of people waiting for their turn to vote snaked out of the schools main lobby and along the sidewalk leading to the parking lot.

Twelve hours later, the six nominees filed onstage and nomination-meeting spokesman Jean-Sbastien Ct announced that the contract the riding had signed with the school was until 7 p.m., had been extended twice, but would not be extended a third time and everyone must leave the building. Ultimately, it was determined that the final results were so close, a recount would be done Monday evening.

Each nominee had a representative in the room during the count and word was that the validity of some ballots was being contested, which slowed the process down.

The time frame for the vote was short considering the number of nominees and the use of ranked ballots can be cumbersome.

The preferential voting system has voters rank candidates in order of preference on paper ballots, which are counted by hand.

If no contestant receives a majority on the count of the voters first choices, the one receiving the fewest votes is eliminated. His or her supporters next preferences are distributed among the remaining candidates in a second count.

This continues until a candidate obtains a majority. With six candidates on the ballot, it is possible to take up to five counts to determine a winner.

kgreenaway@postmedia.com

Read more here:

Ballot recount for Liberal candidate in PierrefondsDollard riding - Montreal Gazette