With record-breaking advance voting, and a storm of an election day behind the province, Elections BC says at least two recounts and a final count still stand in the way of official results.
Elections BC says the initial count concluded Saturday night, but it will take the non-partisan office of the legislature at least another week before a final count ends.
On election night, Elections BC says some results were delayed as three districts did not finish reporting until Sunday. One district, North Coast-Haida Gwaii was delayed when a supervisory voting officer had a medical emergency and was in hospital during initial count, leading to a delay for one tabulator there.
Communications Director Andrew Watson says there are still several factors to overcome before any party is declared the winner.
“Some ballots do need to go through screening before being counted to ensure that the voter that cast that ballot was eligible to vote and that they only voted once,” said Watson, adding that the screening mostly applies to mail-in-ballots received after the close of advance voting.
He says those will be added to the final count which will take place between Oct. 26 and 28.
So far, recounts are required for two electoral districts where the difference between the leading candidates was 100 votes or fewer.
In the Juan de Fuca-Malahat 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 riding, BC NDP candidate Amna Shah leads with 95 votes over BC Conservatives candidate Zeeshan Wahla.
Even with recounts and the final count out of the way, Watson said the wait could still continue.
He says candidates can request a “judicial recount” based on certain criteria, like evidence that votes were accepted or rejected improperly.
“Once final count’s done, then we may also have an automatic judicial recount if the difference between the top two candidates is less than one five-hundredth of the total ballots considered in that district.”
But meeting that threshold is pretty unlikely. In the Coquitlam-Burke Mountain riding for instance, the two candidates are currently separated by 259 votes. One five-hundredth of the total 20,967 ballots in that district would be approximately 42 votes — so the riding doesn’t qualify.
Watson says there are certain similarites to the 2017 provincial election, with a lot of attention given to the final count.
“Regardless of the election, it’s been a long-standing part of the process in B.C. elections for a long time, so we’re continuing to do that per the provisions of the legislation that governs our work.”
He says early estimates show that 57 per cent of registered voters turned out this year, compared to the 54 per cent in 2020.
“We also saw the most ballots ever cast in a B.C. election, with just over 2 million, beating the previous record of around 1.9 million that was set in the 2017 B.C. election.”
By current count, the BC NDP hold 46 seats, the BC Conservatives hold 45, and the BC Green Party holds two.
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—With files from Raynaldo Suarez and Srushti Gangdev