The results of Calgary’s election are now official… well, nearly.

Second-place mayoral finisher Sonya Sharp has officially requested a recount following her 581-vote loss to Mayor-elect Jeromy Farkas as it falls within the 0.5 per cent margin of total votes cast in that contest.

It comes as Elections Calgary finalized their results, including a Ward 12 recount that saw A Better Calgary Party’s Mike Jamieson double his previous 29-vote lead to 59.

Sharp, in a media release Friday afternoon, said that she requested the recount to ensure transparency in the election process.

“Calgarians deserve absolute confidence that every vote has been counted accurately and that the process is beyond reproach,” said Sharp.

“This request is about strengthening trust in the system.”

In the letter sent to Elections Calgary from Rose LLP on behalf of Sharp, it also indicated that the candidate would likely initiate a judicial recount, suggesting there were errors in the count.

“In addition to the within Application for a recount on request, our offices have been instructed by the Candidate to consider the initiation of an application for a judicial recount of ballots cast in the Election (LAEA, Part 4, ss. 103 to 115), given evidence of “improperly counted or rejected ballots,” the letter read.

The recount will happen on Monday, beginning at 9:30 a.m., according to Elections Calgary.

“Following the recount, the mayor contest ballot account will be corrected, if necessary. Any changes to the official results will be communicated by the Returning Officer,” read a statement from Elections Calgary.

According to Elections Calgary, overall voter turnout was a hair above 39 per cent. There were 349,815 voters, with 896,042 enumerated electors, based on the Alberta Elections elector dataset dated Sept. 16, 2025.

Some new councillors were confident of an early win, while an incumbent wasn’t

Ward 11 councillor-elect Rob Ward said when the first two polls came in on Monday night and he already had a significant lead over incumbent Kourtney Penner, they were confident they had won.

Ward lost a close race to Penner in 2021 and was a vocal critic of Penner’s council activity over the past four years. This time around, he said he heard the dissatisfaction at the doors.

“I mean, our prediction was 60 per cent (victory margin) and I think we ended up at 62,” Ward said.

“It reflected, sort of the data that we had just based on our door knocking and discussions with people. It was strong support right from the beginning, and the final results reflected that.”

Ward 4’s DJ Kelly was also in a close race in 2021 with then-incumbent Sean Chu. Chu ultimately won that race amid the controversy surrounding his inappropriate behaviour with a youth while he was a member of the Calgary police.

This time, Chu wasn’t running and Kelly took another shot.

Kelly said he had scrutineers at all of the polls, and when he received his first call of the night from one of them at a polling station in an area that he lost last time and he was up by 104 votes, the writing was on the wall.

“We didn’t door knock there as much as what we wanted to, so with only one poll reporting, I was pretty confident that we had won. So, it was the exact opposite of everyone else’s experience,” Kelly said.

Ward 10 incumbent and councillor-elect Andre Chabot said despite his tenure on city council, and his name recognition in the ward, he couldn’t take the campaign for granted.  Chabot said that two-thirds of the ward was new for him in the 2021 election after boundaries were redrawn.

Plus, he had Covid for a spell during prime door-knocking time over the past few weeks. He wasn’t able to go out for nearly a week.

“I’m always thinking that I’m that I’m doing less well than I end up actually doing just I guess, in my nature, that I’m always questioning whether I’ve done enough.

“I always feel like I could have done more but didn’t have much time this time.”

Time to get to work

Councillors-elect were onboarding this week, learning about the city, the systems, the people and collecting their technology.

Councillor-elect Kelly said that his first priority wasn’t necessarily connected to creating new policy at city hall. It was about making sure he was connected to his neighbours – both on the new city council, and in the ward he represents.

“We’ve seen far too many examples from city hall over the past couple of years of how neighbours’ thoughts and opinions and local expertise are frequently not even asked for, and usually when it is asked for, it’s asked for way too late in the process,” Kelly said.

He said the conversation needs to be with residents about the pinch points in Ward 4 communities.

“They know these things better than I know them, than the city knows them,” Kelly said.

“We need to build that pipeline so that they can have conversations with the city about what it is that most needs doing in their neighbourhood, and then the second part of that becomes prioritizing those items in city budgets.”

Ward came in with a clear priority: Repeal citywide rezoning.

“I think that blanket rezoning is a very time-sensitive issue because people are seeing their neighbourhoods change in ways that they don’t agree with, and that’s why I think so many people supported me,” he said.

“I would say, not only do people want blanket rezoning repealed, but they want it to be expedited.”

He said there’s a mayor-elect in place who also ran on repealing rezoning, so they should be able to get it done.

Chabot said not-so-fast to many of the newbies on city council. There’s a lot that has to go on after an election before councillors even get a sniff of action. It started with the now-mandated onboarding and orientation – even for incumbent councillors like himself.

“Then we go into organizational day, where we select different committees. And then people have to become familiar with what those committees are. You have to select a chair for each of those committees,” Chabot said.

“Then we’ve got the Alberta municipalities conference in Calgary, and then budget. It’s like drinking from a fire hose for all these newbies.”

With that, the realization that if you want money in one place, it has to come from another, and then finding out that the action you want to take has a significant collateral impact.

“It’s a complex organization that is structured around a legislative framework, and so to make changes, you have to, first and foremost, make sure that you are in compliance with the Municipal Government Act,” he said.

“Then, if you are, that the impacts don’t negatively impact something else by unintended consequences of decisions.”

Councillors will be sworn in on Oct. 29.