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B.C.’s election outcome is still undecided as the count of mail-in votes continued over the weekend and a handful of races remain undecided.
Recounts in Kelowna Centre and Surrey City Centre were expected to finish Sunday night, while the Juan de Fuca-Malahat recount is expected to be completed on Monday.
The closest undecided riding in the province is now Surrey-Guildford, where the NDP’s Garry Begg, who has represented the riding since 2017, has cut the lead of B.C. Conservative Honveer Randhawa to 12 votes from 102, pushing a third riding below the threshold for an automatic recount.
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“We will have to wait until the conclusion of the final count tomorrow to see if there will be an automatic judicial recount in that riding,” Melanie Hull, a spokesperson with Elections B.C., said in an email.
If the difference between the top two candidates in a riding after the final count is less than 1/500th of all ballots, a judicial recount must take place, Hull said.
Judicial recounts are conducted by a justice of the Supreme Court of B.C. and may include some or all of the ballots in an election.
With an estimated 226 absentee and special votes still to be counted in the riding, Surrey-Guildford could provide David Eby’s NDP with the narrowest of majorities if the lead there flips on Monday.
Elections B.C. says the provincewide tally of more than 22,000 absentee and special votes will be updated hourly on its website from 9 a.m. Monday.
Those votes only make up about one per cent of the total votes cast in the election. Processing them involves several steps in order to ensure the secrecy of the vote.
Although no leads have changed in nine races that are too close to call, the prospects for an NDP government increased on Saturday after the party widened leads in some close races thanks to mail-in ballots and cut back B.C. Conservative margins in others.
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The NDP is elected or leading with 46 seats and John Rustad’s Conservatives with 45, both short of a 47-seat majority. The Greens could hold the balance of power with two seats.
Elections B.C. says the results of recounts in Juan de Fuca-Malahat on Vancouver Island and Surrey City Centre that began at 1 p.m. Sunday will be posted online when they are complete.
The recounts were triggered because margins of victory after the initial tally were below 100 votes.
Counting of mail-in ballots on Saturday widened the NDP lead in Juan de Fuca-Malahat to 106 votes, while the party now leads by 178 in Surrey City Centre.
The provincewide count of more than 43,000 mail-in ballots was scheduled to finish on Sunday.
— With files from Gordon McIntyre and The Canadian Press
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