Rustad seeks review as Elections BC says box of 861 votes went uncounted

Conservative Leader John Rustad casts his vote at Cluculz Lake Community Hall near Vanderhoof, B.C., on Saturday, October 19, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/James Doyle

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 BC 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.

In a follow-up email, Elections BC said the error with the ballot box in Prince George-Mackenzie was uncovered as part of the same process.

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 initial 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. Unfortunately, unintentional human errors do occur in administering the vote," he said.

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.

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.

Hamish Telford, an associate professor of political science at the University of the Fraser Valley, said the acknowledgement of errors can be seen in both a good and bad light.

"The bad news, of course, is they misplaced some ballots, didn't count them on election night. The good news is they found them, and they found them through their own checks and balances, and whatever systems they have in place to catch these things appear to have worked," he said in an interview Monday.

Still, Telford said not everyone is going to have their suspicions about the integrity of the process put to rest.

"I don't think people who are skeptical about the results of the election and the work that Elections BC did will be at all satisfied with whatever Elections BC says now," he said.

As for Rustad's call for a review, Telford said it would be "perfectly appropriate" for a committee in the legislature to look at the process and make recommendations for changes they think are necessary.

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."

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.

Boegman has scheduled a news conference for Tuesday.

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

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2024.