Political devotees across the province were left scratching their heads Wednesday night, as Elections BC appeared to change its mind about the number of ballot boxes in the Vancouver-Point Grey byelection.
When polls closed at 8 p.m., the official election website listed a total of 134 ballot boxes to be counted. A little more than an hour later, the site announced the perplexing news that 138 of 134 ballot boxes had been counted, and then upped that to an astounding 145 of 134 boxes reporting.
The mystifying results sent the Twitterverse of armchair political pundits into a tizzy.
"BC Elections site reporting 138 of 134 ballots now counted. Who knew elections could go into overtime?" Michael Tippett tweeted.
Jasmin Mujanovic joked: "BC Elections is using ‘Kandahar rules' to count the votes, don't worry about it. Democracy!"
A few minutes later, the total number of ballot boxes had shot up to a more logical 167, with 150 reporting. By that time, most major media outlets had already called the race in favour of Premier Christy Clark by a 300-vote margin, but the new ballot box total meant the count was far from over.
Political tweeps demanded answers.
"Ok Elections BC ... The people are watching ... Time to explain what the $&#% your [sic] doing," Doug Ragan tweeted.
But no answer was immediately forthcoming.
On Thursday morning, Elections BC spokesman Don Main told ctvbc.ca that the error caught elections officials by surprise as well.
"We saw it at the same time everyone else did. When all of a sudden it said 138 out of 134 ballot boxes, we said, ‘What?'" he said.
"When we saw it, we fixed it right away."
Main blames the problem on a "technical error" that meant only three out of 36 advanced polls were included in the total count at the beginning of the night.
He says that the website has been adjusted to automatically update ballot counts in an effort to ensure the problem doesn't happen again.
