Vancouver Sun

Final ballot count will take extra time, official says

- JENNIFER SALTMAN jensaltman@postmedia.com twitter.com/jensaltman

British Columbians will be eager to find out the results of this fall's unexpected provincial election, but experts are urging caution and patience because election day will be anything but normal.

The COVID-19 pandemic has kept people closer to home, and more voters are choosing to cast their ballots by mail, which means the known outcome of the election could be delayed.

“We really need to be ready to not know for sure what things are like on election night, and we might not even know for a couple of weeks or more after,” said Gerald Baier, an associate professor of political science at the University of B.C.

Traditiona­lly, ballots that are cast in advance polls and on election day — about 90 per cent of votes — are reported as preliminar­y results on election day, which is Oct. 24 this year. The remaining votes, which are absentee ballots, are counted later.

Based on those initial results, broadcast media and other sources can, with a reasonable amount of certainty, make determinat­ions about which candidates have won most ridings and which party will form government.

“I think what you see is what you get when you go to bed on (a typical) election night, assuming you go to bed reasonably late,” said Allan Tupper, a political-science professor at UBC. “You're not waiting.”

This time, those making the election-night determinat­ions will have a more difficult task when it comes to making those calls because a large percentage of the votes will be outstandin­g.

There are some ridings that will be obvious because they are traditiona­lly held by one party or there is only one candidate from a major party. But more ridings than usual will be impossible to judge.

“It's going to be very interestin­g and I have no clear sense of what it will look like,” Tupper said.

Baier said there tends to be enormous pressure on media outlets to be the first to call a race.

“That pressure, I think, is unnecessar­y, but also a little bit dangerous when we know that such a high proportion of the votes will be mailed in,” Baier said.

Many races could hinge on a final count, which covers absentee ballots and takes place at least 13 days after election day. There are a number of ways to cast an absentee vote, including voting outside of one's electoral district, at a voting place other than one's assigned location, at a district electoral office, or by mail-in ballot.

During that period between election day and when the votes are counted, ballots are screened and then sent back to the ridings. Counting usually takes two to three days, depending on the volume of ballots.

Elections B.C. spokesman Andrew Watson said the wild card this time is how many ballots will come in by mail. As of Thursday night, Elections B.C. had received almost 500,000 requests for mailin voting packages.

In 2017, Elections B.C. considered more than 160,000 absentee ballots — out of almost two million votes — 6,500 of which arrived by mail. The final count began 13 days after election day and took two days.

Chief electoral officer Anton Boegman has said that based on surveys, 35 to 40 per cent of British Columbians expressed interest in voting by mail, and there could be as many as 800,000 mail-in ballots. He said that it will likely require extra time to deal with those ballots, but he was unable to estimate how much longer.

“Our commitment is to make sure that the count is conducted as quickly as possible, that all the necessary integrity checks are made and the results are reported as soon as we can,” Boegman said last month. Watson said Elections B.C. hopes to be able to provide a breakdown of the number of mailin ballots per riding before the final count, but it won't be available before or even right after election day.

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