City of Cornwall Completes Verification of 2026 Municipal and School Board Elections Results

The City of Cornwall has completed its post-election verification of the results from the 2026 Municipal and School Board Election held on October 26, 2026.

Following the close of voting on Election Day, voting tabulators at each voting location were closed and results were reported by Managing Deputy Returning Officers to Election Headquarters. Designated staff manually recorded the reported results in a master election results spreadsheet, together with the results from online voting, to allow the City to provide timely unofficial election results to electors, candidates and the media.

As part of the City's normal post-election verification process, the Election Lead and designated staff subsequently reviewed the source results against the information manually entered into the election night master spreadsheet.

During this verification, some data-entry and compilation discrepancies in the unofficial results were identified and corrected for the certified official results.

The Corrections

In the Mayor's race, the unofficial results display on October 26, 2026 showed Justin Towndale's online voting result as 199. This was actually the number in the “Decline to Vote” column, not Mr. Towndale’s online vote total. Mr. Towndale received 2,671 online votes. The wrong number was manually entered in his column in the spreadsheet used to produce unofficial results. The online votes were counted correctly. The mistake, a human error, was corrected through the official results verification process.

The verification also identified that results from the Townships of South Glengarry and North Glengarry for the English Separate School Board Trustee race had not been included in the consolidated unofficial results produced by the City on election night.  As the City of Cornwall is responsible for consolidating the applicable School Board results, the verified results from both municipalities were then incorporated into the final totals for the certified official results. These included 425 additional votes for Karen Torrie-Racine, 376 for Donna Nielsen, 222 for Suzanne Ayotte and 277 for Krista Ryan.

The difference in numbers occurred when vote totals were manually entered into a spreadsheet used to produced unofficial results. They did not affect the votes cast or the original voting records. The City checked the spreadsheet totals against those records and corrected the discrepancies before preparing the certified official results.

All results produced on election night were preliminary and unofficial, not final. They must and were verified before the City certified the official, final results. This routine review, which must take place after every Election Day, is an important safeguard to ensure the final totals accurately reflect the original voting records.

Election Results

There are 41,656 eligible voters in the City of Cornwall. The 2026 Municipal and School Board Election saw a 34.16% voter turnout.

Quote from the Election Lead

“Election night unofficial results are provided as quickly as possible for the benefit of candidates, electors and the media, but they are expressly considered unofficial. The verification process that follows the next day provides the opportunity to carefully compare the reported figures against the source results and correct any transcription or compilation discrepancies before the results are finalized.

Transparency is particularly important in the administration of an election. We are therefore providing this information so that electors understand what occurred, what was identified during verification, and how the verified results were incorporated into the certified official election results.”