By Canadian Press

B.C.’s chief electoral officer defends election integrity after ‘human errors’

Nov 5, 2024 | 12:50 PM

British Columbia’s chief electoral officer says “extremely challenging weather conditions” and a new voting system factored into human errors that saw ballots go uncounted in the provincial election — though none were large enough to change results.

Anton Boegman says the agency is investigating the mistakes to “identify key lessons learned” to improve training, change processes or make recommendations for legislative change to ensure “errors can be prevented in the future.”

Boegman says the issues will be “fully documented” in his report to the legislature on the provincial election, the first held using electronic tabulators.

He says he’s confident election officials found all “anomalies,” which included a ballot box in Prince George-Mackenzie that went uncounted, and other issues involving out-of-district votes tied to the province’s “unique” vote-anywhere model.

Boegman says the vote was administered by approximately 17,000 workers, less than half than would’ve been needed under the old paper-based system, many of whom worked long hours on a day when an atmospheric river washed over the B.C. coast.

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He says results for the election will be returned in 90 of the province’s 93 ridings today, while judicial recounts will be held in Surrey-Guildford, Kelowna-Centre and Prince George-Mackenzie.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 5, 2024.

Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press