Lester’s recount fizzles!

The Herald reports:

New information in Wellington’s mayoral vote recount saga shows Justin Lester doesn’t have the numbers he was counting on.
Final election results put Mayor Andy Foster just 62 votes ahead of Lester to claim the city’s top job.
Lester’s formal application filed in Wellington District Court for a recount pointed to 302 partially informal votes which were excluded because voters filled out the form incorrectly.
The application said 193 of them would have swung in Lester’s favour and just 109 in Foster’s, changing the outcome of the mayoralty.

But according to new information, 145 of those 193 votes would actually have already gone to Foster because he had a valid preference before the sequence break.

So even if the invalid votes were counted, the result could not be over-turned!

UPDATE: And it is all over as the Judge has turned down the recount application