Conservative leader seeks independent review as Elections B.C. says box of 861 votes went uncounted

British Columbia’s election agency says it has discovered that a ballot box containing 861 votes wasn’t counted in the recent provincial election, as well as other mistakes, including 14 votes going unreported in a crucial riding narrowly won by the NDP.

The errors prompted B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad to call for an independent review on Monday.

Elections B.C. said in a statement that the omission of the ballot box did not affect the result in Prince George-Mackenzie, the electoral district where the box was found. 

It said the unreported votes in Surrey-Guildford were discovered last week during preparations for a judicial recount in the riding, where Garry Begg’s 27-vote victory propelled the New Democrats to a one-seat majority government.

Rustad called the errors “an unprecedented failure by the very institution responsible for ensuring the fairness and accuracy of our elections.”

“While I am not disputing the final outcome pending remaining judicial recounts, it’s clear that mistakes like these severely undermine public trust in our electoral process,” he said.

B.C.’s chief electoral officer, Anton Boegman, said in the statement that the discovery of the “anomaly” in the Surrey-Guildford count triggered a provincewide review.

“Our elections rely on the work of over 17,000 election officials from communities across the province,” he said. “Unfortunately, unintentional human errors do occur in administering the vote.”

The review, which started last Wednesday and ended Sunday, identified what the statement described as “data entry omissions” that resulted in mistakes impacting “a small number of votes” in 69 of the province’s 93 ridings.

It said the omissions “comprise only 0.05 per cent of total votes in those districts.”

The mistake resulted in 14 votes for Surrey-Guildford not being counted, it said. 

The recounts in the province’s Supreme Court for that riding and Kelowna Centre are scheduled to take place on Nov. 7 and Nov. 8.

Out-of-district results not reported

In British Columbia, voters can cast a ballot for their riding at polling stations across the province.

The statement said election officials in six ridings erred by not reporting out-of-district results that had been recorded on 11 tabulator tapes.

The statement said the number of unreported votes in each district did not affect the outcome in any of them, pending judicial recounts in the two ridings that had been triggered by their narrow margins.

Boegman said the errors were disclosed to the judges and parties involved in the recounts and added that election officials “were continuing our review to ensure that any additional omissions were identified.”

WATCH | What happens after the election? 

After the election, what happens next in B.C. politics?

In CBC’s On the Ledge, political reporters Les Leyne and Justine Hunter explain what’s next for the newly elected B.C. NDP government, including judicial recounts and the selection of a new Speaker.

The statement said a recount of the ballot box in Prince George-Mackenzie, a riding easily won by B.C. Conservative Kiel Giddens, had been requested. Giddens’ win in the riding was the first victory projected by CBC News on election night.

Stewart Prest, a political scientist at the University of B.C., said that the timing of Elections B.C.’s statement “wasn’t great,” given how close it was to the start of judicial recounts.

“This is an event that is happening at a time, where after a nine-day wait for the finalization of the result, people’s nerves were fraying a little bit,” he told Gloria Macarenko, host of CBC’s On The Coast.

“We heard questions about whether the electoral results were trustworthy, and so something like this, well, we can certainly say it’s great that Elections B.C. caught it.”

Prest said he was curious to find out how a ballot box was missed on election night, given the system of checks and balances in place and said Rustad’s call for an independent review was merited.

Elections B.C. did not explain how the ballot box was missed on the election day count.

It did not immediately respond to a request for more details. However, Boegman is set to hold a Tuesday morning news conference to address the unreported votes.

Pending the judicial recounts, Premier David Eby’s NDP has 47 seats in the legislature, the slimmest possible margin to form a majority government in British Columbia.