Dave Whalley won a 1979 race for a Saskatoon city council seat by a single vote and one candidate ran five times without ever getting elected.

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Few candidates probably believe in the well-worn adage that every vote counts, like Dave Whalley did 45 years ago.

Whalley shrugged off his apparent loss in the Saskatoon city council election on Oct. 24, 1979, according to an account in The StarPhoenix the following day: “Ah well, I’ll give it a whack next time.”

Graham Parsons had been declared the winner of the race to represent Ward 4 by a 25-vote margin over Whalley after the final four polls were counted. But 45 rejected ballots were discovered, and that shifted the victory to Whalley, an education consultant for the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

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The discovered ballots awarded a one-vote triumph to Whalley, one of five rookie councillors elected in 1979.

Parsons’s reaction? “I’m trying to find a judge now,” Parsons told The StarPhoenix the day after the vote. (Counting ballots dragged on until 3 a.m. the following day, a legacy of late results in Saskatoon that inexplicably continues today.)

Parsons found his judge, but that judge ruled on Nov. 7 that he had no jurisdiction to order a recount, since there was no evidence that ballots had been counted improperly.

Whalley was relieved to keep his council seat, but started the process to reconsider the rules for recounts so candidates did not have to seek a judge like Parsons did.

A month after his election,........

© Saskatoon StarPhoenix