Counting of remaining B.C. election ballots begins Friday

B.C. politicians are anxiously awaiting the results of the final vote count, which began on Friday. Travis Prasad has more on how 662,000 mail-in votes could change the seat count.

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – The final result of the U.S. election isn’t the only thing to be held up by absentee votes. The last of the ballots in B.C.’s election will begin to be counted on Friday, with results expected in the coming days.

There are four ridings likely to be nail-biters, with just a few hundred votes between the leading candidates. However, there are 16 B.C. ridings in total with thousands of absentee and mail-in ballots that could shake up election night results.

The races with not even 200 votes splitting the difference on election night are Richmond South Centre, Vernon-Monashee, Abbotsford-Mission, and Chilliwack-Kent.

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Prevailing thought is the BC NDP will take all but maybe Chilliwack-Kent, where incumbent MLA Laurie Throness held the seat as a Liberal before he resigned from the caucus just a week ahead of the election.

Right now the NDP has 55 seats, while the Liberals hold 29, and the BC Greens have three.

There are more than 660,000 ballots Elections BC is hoping will be counted by the end of the weekend. It is expected to provide updates throughout the process.

“We are going to start reporting results on [Nov. 6] on our website, but it may take some time, given the extra steps necessary to process these types of ballots,” Elections BC spokesperson Andrew Watson said on Nov. 4. “We are hopeful that we can complete the count within three days.”

He added the agency has hired more staff to count the mail-in and absentee ballots compared to previous years.

The Oct. 24 election saw a record number of mail-in votes — close to 500,000 — cast as fears rose amid the COVID-19 pandemic. For context, there were a total of 6,500 mail-in ballots cast in 2017 of the overall 200,000 absentee votes.

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