With recounts in three provincial ridings set to begin Sunday afternoon, the focus is on Juan de Fuca-Malahat, which has the greatest potential to flip the NDP’s razor-thin lead of 46 seats to the Conservatives’ 45.
Only 23 votes separate the NDP’s Dan Lajeunesse, with 8,946 votes, from the Conservative’s Marina Sapozhnikov, with 8,923 votes in initial counting. Recounts are automatic when the top two candidates are within 100 votes or fewer of each other.
All ballots cast in Juan de Fuca-Malahat — including outstanding mail-in and absentee votes — are expected to be tallied by Monday.
Official recounts, done by hand, will also take place in Surrey City Centre, where the NDP leads with just 93 votes more than the Conservatives (6,440 to 6,347), as well as a partial recount of one tabulator in Kelowna Centre due to a transcription error of one vote, a discrepancy Elections B.C. said is “likely due to election official error.” Those recounts are expected to be completed on Sunday.
Elections B.C. said Thursday that recount requests were declined for Green candidate Lisa Gunderson in Oak Bay-Gordon Head, who trailed the NDP’s Diana Gibson by 7,529 votes (13,726 to 6,197); and for NDP candidate Ronna-Rae Leonard in Courtenay-Comox, who was 234 votes behind Conservative candidate Brennan Day (13,158 to 12,924).
The requests didn’t meet Election Act criteria for recounts. Recount requests were also rejected for Maple Ridge East and Surrey-Guildford.
Elections B.C. said the final count involves three processes: counting mail-in ballots, which starts Saturday, counting absentee ballots, which occurs Monday, and recounts like the one in Juan de Fuca-Malahat, which will start Sunday but isn’t expected to conclude until Monday given the high turnout of voters. Numbers will be updated hourly on Monday.
Elections B.C. estimates approximately 65,000 outstanding ballots will be tallied as part of the final vote count. That’s three per cent of the preliminary total 2,037,897 votes cast.
The majority are mail-in ballots received up until the deadline of 8 p.m. Pacific on Oct. 19.
The rest include mail-in packages dropped off at district voting places and district electoral offices, special ballots such as ballots cast by voters in hospital, and absentee ballots cast at voting places that did not use technology to administer voting.
Elections B.C. said it will update its website with mail-in ballot-count results starting on Saturday at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. and when the ballot count is complete.
After the final tallying, a judicial recount could take place if the difference between the top two candidates in any riding is less than 1/500 of the total.
Michael J. Prince, a political scientist and Lansdowne Professor of Social Policy at the University of Victoria, said recounts generally, though not always, confirm the initial count on election night.
“Evidence from provincial elections in B.C. over the past 20 years indicates that mail-in ballots tend to favour the NDP and the Greens, compared to the party formerly known as Liberals,” said Prince.
“I expect a similar pattern and outcome this time, too.”
Go to https://elections.bc.ca to see election results.
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