During the October 19 provincial general election, Elections BC had counted and re-counted ballots faster than ever before, but not fast enough to stave off groundless, and largely anonymous, questions over the integrity of the electoral process on social media.
As final counts continued to be updated Monday, chief electoral officer Anton Boegman told Glacier Media that officials administered the election in strict accordance with the province's laws.
“I've seen some of the stuff that is on X. They talk about the delays but that's part of our process here in British Columbia,” he said. “It's actually shorter for this election than it has been previously.”
The election night tally left many electoral districts with razor thin margins as only hundreds of votes separated the two parties' candidates. As absentee ballot counting picked up again Monday, a single electoral district separated the two main parties — the BC NDP winning or leading in 46 seats and Conservative Party of BC ahead in 45.
By the afternoon, the battleground riding of Surrey-Guildford had flipped back in favour of the NDP, raising its chances of forming a majority government.
However, recounts in closely-contested ridings would have gone ahead no matter how close the overall outcome was on election night.
Counting delay shorter than in the past
At 9 p.m. on election night, independent election officials used new tabulators — all overseen by scrutineers from each of the parties — to report preliminary results to the head office and counting warehouse in Victoria.
Elections BC spokesperson Wesley MacInnis told Glacier Media Oct.29 how that counting process takes place: "When voting closes, election officials produce a paper results tape from the tabulator. They phone these results into their district electoral office, who data enter the results into our results system. Results are then published on our website."
About 13.5 per cent of ballots had been reported within an hour of polls closing in 2020. By that time this year, the new technology allowed officials to report 85 per cent of preliminary results.
By Oct. 20 Elections BC estimated 99.72 per cent of ballots — or 2,037,897 — had been counted, leaving just 49,000 mail-in and absentee (out of district) ballots left to count by hand.
This estimate changed by Oct. 25, resulting in a new estimated total of about 69,000 ballots for the final count scheduled between Oct. 26 to Oct. 28.
“You know, with the quote, unquote, ‘found ballots,’ we know that there's huge interest in the number of ballots that will be considered at final count, and we always strive to provide the best estimate of this number that's known at the time,” said Boegman.
“Obviously we could say nothing until we have the exact numbers, but I don't think that's serving anyone. So, we do our best to give the best estimate when we can.”
Officials had set up over 200 “non-technology polls,” said Beogman, “and the precise numbers of any absentee ballots cast in those locations — it just wasn't available on election night.”
BC Conservative president pushes back on questions of election integrity
On X.com, questions about election integrity, largely emanating from anonymous accounts, prompted commentary and further questions from verifiable individuals, including podcasters and even party officials.
Aisha Estey, president of the Conservative Party of B.C., issued a statement pushing back against those claims.
“I spent the last two days in a warehouse watching the transcription and counting of mail in ballots. Elections BC staff have been working tirelessly and doing their best within the confines of the legislation that governs their work,” she said.
“Would we have liked mail-ins to be counted closer to E-Day? Sure. But I saw nothing that caused me concern.”
How do mail-in ballots get stored and counted?
Mailed ballots must be opened by hand. Then, said Boegman, “we have to screen them to make sure that the voter who has cast it is registered and eligible and that they haven't voted at a previous opportunity. So that screening takes time to ensure the integrity of the process.”
Boegman said eliminating delays on election night would mean doing away with out-of-district voting, mail-in voting and telephone-assisted voting. But that would restrict voting overall.
“This is just part of our democracy and part of it is a result of having a very accessible system,” said Boegman.
Some comments on social media have pointed to a long-standing practice storing advanced ballots outside of electoral offices.
Boegman said in rural communities, district electoral officers may take home sealed advanced poll ballot boxes before returning them for final count at district offices, which can be hundreds of kilometres away.
“They're signed by officials and scrutineers, but our staff (who take an oath) need to maintain chain of custody,” said Boegman.
How does telephone-assisted voting work?
Boegman also explained telephone-assisted voting, used for remote communities and blind or otherwise disabled people.
In one case, he said an entire navy ship's crew deployed at sea used the telephone voting system, which was first introduced in 2017.
One by one, Boegman said the crew would speak to an operator, who would validate their identity based on shared information that the voter and official know.
The telephone voter is then passed off to two operators, who can only identify them through a reference number — not by name. Next, the operators would read out the ballot for the voter and the voter would indicate their choice.
“That choice would get verified by the second individual. And this is a process that's open to scrutinization,” added Boegman.
Why did the final count take place 7 to 9 days after election night?
After the election, Boegman said election officials were working the entire time collecting ballots from across the province. Some workers were even stationed at Canada Post centres to collect ballots as quickly as possible.
The ballots were then processed by hand until tabulations occurred this past weekend.
“Within our legislation, we're doing it as fast as possible, and we're doing it at least a week faster than it had been done, you know, in the past 20 elections,” said Boegman.
He said a huge amount of work went into getting the final ballots counted.
In the tight race of Juan de Fuca-Malahat, Boegman said there were probably voters who cast ballots from dozens of other electoral districts. All those ballots were hand counted, and in each case, copies had to be made for the original ballot box.
“And then we had to securely get that ballot from where it was cast to Juan de Fuca-Malahat for that recount. So, think about that; you've got 93 districts,” said the elections official.
Boegman said other “quality control measures” include making sure there are no tabulator transcription errors. Election workers “go through every single poll,” while candidates or their representatives get to scrutinize one tabulator “to ensure the results match up,” he said.
To date, Elections BC has not reported any complaints from scrutineer observations.
On Monday, Elections BC reported 66,074 certification envelopes, including 44,538 mail-in and telephone ballots (the split is unknown to date but telephone ballots were about 400 in 2017, said Boegman) and 22,536 absentee ballots.
“And so, you know, to think that we can do that in a week is actually, I believe, an incredible achievement.”
This article was updated Oct.29 to include an explanation of the tabulator process
