Recount in Surrey confirms NDP majority in historically-tight B.C. election

A judicial recount successful 1 of the astir hotly-contested ridings successful British Columbia’s provincial predetermination has confirmed the BC NDP won a razor-thin bulk government.

Elections officials, supervised by NDP and BC Conservative scrutineers and overseen by a B.C. Supreme Court Judge, resumed hand-counting thousands of ballots formed successful Surrey-Guildford — won by the NDP — and Kelowna Centre — won by the BC Conservatives.

The Surrey-Guildford number was peculiarly important, representing the NDP’s 47th spot successful the legislature. If the effect were to flip to the Conservatives, David Eby’s New Democrats would person been reduced to a number government.

The last results of the recount showed the NDP’s Gary Begg defeated BC Conservative Honveer Singh Randhawa by 22 votes.

The judicial recount settles a melodramatic last result successful the riding.

The Conservatives appeared to person won the riding connected predetermination nighttime with a 102-vote lead.

But Elections BC’s last ballot count, which included absentee and immoderate mail-in ballots, gave the NDP a 27-vote pb successful the riding. That vantage was reduced to 21 aft an audit recovered 28 ballots formed extracurricular the territory that went initially unreported owed to “human error.”

Speaking with Global News Morning BC connected Friday, Elections B.C. Chief Electoral Officer Anton Boegman said each of the ballots were really counted but were not communicated to the agency’s cardinal reporting system.

“In B.C. we person a vote-anywhere model, and we person a count-where-cast exemplary — truthful successful different districts successful the state voters from Surrey Guildford for illustration formed their ballots, those ballots were counted connected predetermination night, and the results portion was provided,” helium explained.

“Officials should person been capable to telephone those results into the territory bureau wherever it would beryllium entered into our results system. In these cases that didn’t happen.”

Elections workers successful Surrey resumed enactment counting done 19,090 ballots astatine 9 a.m. Friday.

A concurrent judicial recount successful Kelowna Centre besides resumed connected Friday, wherever the BC Conservatives held a 38-vote lead.

Judicial recounts successful B.C. are triggered erstwhile the borderline of triumph is little than 1/500th of the fig of votes cast.

Elections BC is besides conducting a partial recount successful Prince George-Mackenzie, wherever a post-election audit discovered an full ballot container had gone uncounted. The Conservatives clasp a ample pb successful that riding, and the results of the partial recount are not expected to alteration the outcome.

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UBC governmental idiosyncratic Stewart Prest said the drawn-out process makes consciousness fixed Elections BC wants to guarantee it gets the result right, and that the predetermination was historically close.

But helium said maintaining assurance successful the strategy is critical, and that erstwhile the process is done, the non-partisan elections bureau volition request to pass to the nationalist however it tin debar errors successful the future.

Both Eby and Conservative Leader John Rustad person called for a reappraisal of the process. Eby has called for an all-party committee, portion Rustad has called for an autarkic third-party probe.

Prest said the champion solution whitethorn beryllium to bash both, hiring an extracurricular adept to draught a report, which could past beryllium reviewed by a slate of MLAs from each parties.

“We would fundamentally person the champion of some worlds, accusation coming from that reputable adept source, but past having the accidental of partisan actors to scrutinize what is being said and done successful approving those choices,” helium said.

Eby is expected to unveil his caller furniture connected Nov. 18, portion a timeline to callback the legislature remains unclear.