British Columbians are still waiting for results after the 2024 provincial election was deemed too close to call.
Five days since Oct. 19, Elections BC has released more detailed information about how and when vote counts from the provincial election will become final.
The non-partisan office of the legislature says approximately 16,000 more absentee and mail-in ballots than it expected will be part of the final count.
“As the screening process is nearing completion, we now estimate that approximately 65,000 ballots will be counted,” Elections BC said.
The final count will conclude Monday, Oct. 28, but before then, it says at least three recounts are required.
In the Juan de Fuca-Malahat (JFM) riding on Vancouver Island, BC NDP candidate Dana Lajeunesse has beat out BC Conservatives candidate Marina Sapozhnikov by just 20 votes, according to the current count.
In the Surrey City Centre (SRC) riding, BC NDP candidate Amna Shah leads with 95 votes over BC Conservatives candidate Zeeshan Wahla.
On Thursday, Elections BC announced that another partial recount for the Kelowna Centre (KEC) riding is needed after a discrepancy was discovered.
Elections BC says a ballot account and tabulator results tape discovered a transcription error of just one vote.
“While the tabulator in question passed all testing and produced results accurately, a recount of the ballots counted by that tabulator will be conducted as a result of the ballot account error. This recount will be conducted by hand.”
The recounts in JFM, SRC, and KEC will begin at 1 p.m. on Oct. 27, Elections BC says. Those will be recounts of the ballots for the districts that were counted on election night — and in Kelowna Centre’s case, a partial recount.
“Based on the number of ballots to count, we estimate that the SRC recount and KEC partial recount will be complete by the end of the day on October 27. The recount in JFM will not be complete until October 28.”
Four more recounts were requested by candidates, including by BC NDP MLA Gary Begg in Surrey-Guildford, who appears to have lost by a difference of 102 votes. But Elections BC says those requests didn’t meet the requirements and were rejected.
The final count, Elections BC says, will be broken into three distinct processes: counting mail-in ballots, counting absentee ballots, and recounts of ballots counted on election night. That process will take place between Oct. 26 and 28.
By current count, the BC NDP holds 46 seats, the BC Conservatives hold 45, and the BC Green Party holds two.
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