The discovery of hundreds of votes not recorded properly has led B.C. Premier David Eby to commit to striking an all-party committee to examine how the election was conducted.CHAD HIPOLITO/The Canadian Press
Twenty pairs of hands methodically worked their way through the 10 stacks of Surrey-Guildford’s 19,090 ballots as the painstaking judicial recount got under way Thursday in the riding with the tightest result following last month’s B.C. election.
Each ballot was held up so the pair of scrutineers sitting across the fold-out tables – one from the provincial New Democrats and one from the BC Conservatives – could okay the ballot being accepted or rejected. If the parties disagreed, then the disputed ballot is taken to B.C. Supreme Court Justice Kevin Loo in an adjoining space in the rented warehouse that’s been turned into a makeshift courtroom. The judge then weighs the arguments from lawyers for each party before ruling on the validity of the vote.
This exercise – known as a judicial recount – began Thursday morning in Surrey-Guildford. A similar exercise was under way in Kelowna-Centre, where 25,757 ballots were cast. By Friday, these two recounts are expected to solidify the results of the election that returned 47 seats for the NDP, 44 for the BC Conservatives and two for the Greens..
Before the judicial recount, the NDP had the Surrey-Guildford riding by only 21 votes. In Kelowna-Centre, the Conservative had a 38-vote advantage.
Elections BC also conducted a third judicial recount Thursday of a ballot box containing 861 votes that were not counted in Prince George-Mackenzie. That audit won’t have any effect on the outcome of the election because that riding’s Conservative candidate, Kiel Giddens, is ahead of his closest rival by more than 5,000 votes.
Still, the discovery of hundreds of votes not recorded properly has led Premier David Eby to commit to striking an all-party committee to examine how the election was conducted. Earlier this week, BC Conservative Leader John Rustad called for an independent review into this “unprecedented failure” by Elections BC.
Jill Lawrance, executive director of electoral operations at Elections BC, told reporters observing the recount Thursday in Surrey that the 10 pairs of officials counting ballots there inspect each one and “make their best assessment of the intent of the voter.”
“If scrutineers raise an objection, both parties come to the table and, if they agree on the vote, the judge has indicated he doesn’t need to see it,” Ms. Lawrance said. “But if there’s a disagreement about who that vote should count for, that ballot will be brought to the judge, he will look at the ballot, hear arguments from both sides and determine who the vote should count for.”
That happened twice before lunch on Thursday, with the judge rejecting both ballots brought before him, ruling they did not clearly indicate which candidate the voter intended to endorse.
With a report from The Canadian Press