The counting still isn’t done in B.C.’s election. Here’s what happens next

David Eby will be premier, but the results of B.C.’s provincial election still aren’t completely finalized.

A pair of judicial recounts next week will determine whether the B.C. NDP forms a majority or minority government.

Forty-seven seats are needed in order to form a majority and right now the NDP is elected in 46, and leading in one.

That riding is Surrey-Guildford which, as of Monday, saw the NDP’s Garry Begg ahead of Honveer Singh Randhawa of the Conservative Party of B.C. by just 27 votes.

That margin is too small for the CBC News decision desk to project a winner before a judicial recount is complete — a mandatory measure any time the margin of victory is within 1/500th of all votes cast in a specific riding.

A judicial recount will also be held in Kelowna Centre, where the Conservative candidate leads the NDP by 38 votes, but for which the CBC decision desk has already projected the Conservatives will win.

Overseen by a B.C. Supreme Court judge, the recounts must take place within 15 days of the declaration of the official election results, which happened on Oct. 28.

On Wednesday, court orders set the judicial recounts for both ridings to take place Nov. 7-8. 

A matter of math — and trust

It is normal for counts and recounts to carry on long after election day but it is rare for them to be so consequential. That’s because, generally speaking, onlookers can mathematically predict who winners will be even before all the votes are tallied.

For example, on election night in B.C., the first two ridings were called for the B.C. Conservatives within twenty minutes of the polls being closed, despite the fact there were still dozens of ballots to be counted.

WATCH | How CBC News ‘calls’ an election: 

How CBC’s decision desk ‘calls’ an election

How does the CBC make projections in an election? Well, let’s go behind the scenes and find out what goes into calls and managing coverage on election night. The team works hard to ensure that results are brought to you accurately every time.

That’s because organizations like CBC News were able to calculate the number of votes in the riding and the number of votes for the Conservative candidates, and determine that the lead was so large that there was no way for the NDP or any other party to win.

Those first two ridings were Prince George-Mackenzie, which saw Conservative candidate Kiel Giddens win by more than 5,000 votes, and Nechako Lakes, where Conservative Leader John Rustad took home a nearly 68 per cent vote share.

Similarly in Saskatchewan, where a provincial election was held this past Monday, CBC News and others were able to project a majority government for the Saskatchewan Party before projecting the results of several ridings, including two which are still in play.

When a clear winner emerges early on, little attention is paid to the counting of other ballots that were sent in by mail or by absentee voters.

But when the results are close, as they were in B.C., the counting of those votes come under more scrutiny as they are needed to determine who is victorious in both individual ridings and in the electoral race overall. So while some years there will be little reporting on mail-in and absentee ballots, this year political watchers paid close attention.

And the fact that so much counting is already done is an improvement over past years: In 2017 it took 14 days for absentee ballot counting to start and 52 days to determine who would govern.

Throughout this campaign, the leaders of all three major parties have expressed their confidence in B.C.’s electoral system, with officials from the NDP, Greens and Conservatives taking part in overseeing the process.

David Black, an associate professor of political science at Greater Victoria’s Royal Roads University, says that transparency is key to maintaining public trust in how votes are counted.

“The distance between your vote — among two million — and that government on the other side, it’s a long one. And it’s one that really depends on you trusting that our non-partisan elections administration …[are] doing the work of ensuring that integrity,” he said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

The different types of votes and how they are counted

Some of the confusion members of the public might have with the vote counting process could stem from the different types of votes to be counted.

The entire process is laid out in Election B.C.’s 61-page Guide to Voting and Counting, but a broad overview shows most votes are divided into either the initial count, which is done on general voting day, and the final count, which takes place at least five days after the general voting day.

Different types of votes are tabulated in each of those counts.

For example, more than a million ballots were cast in advance voting in the weeks leading up to the election, setting a new record.

The majority of those votes were counted on election night, Oct. 19, along with most of the votes that were cast in person at voting stations that day.

Also counted on Oct. 19 were the majority of mail-in ballots that had been received by Elections B.C. prior to the close of advance voting.

And this year, unlike in previous years, absentee ballots were also included in the election night count, at least at the voting stations with the technology to have the results shared in the proper riding.

Absentee ballots are ones cast by people who voted outside of their electoral district or somewhere other than the polling station they were assigned to.

Most of those votes were counted using tabulators, with the exception of some stations that did not have access to that technology, in which case votes were counted by hand.

Mail-in ballots were also accepted up until the close of voting, at 8 p.m. PT on October 19. Any mail-in ballots received between the close of advanced voting and the close of voting on Oct. 19 were not counted until the weekend following the election, starting on Oct. 26, as part of the final count.

Also tabulated in the final count were any absentee, telephone or other ballots not included in the initial count.

Those were done using tabulators.

Then there were the recounts which started on Oct. 27 for Juan de Fuca-Malahat, Surrey City Centre and Kelowna Centre. Those recounts were done by hand and were all completed by Oct. 28.

Once done, Elections B.C. presented its final election results, with only judicial recounts still to come.