B.C.’s Chief Electoral Officer says ‘extremely harsh weather conditions’ and new voting system factored into human errors that left hundreds of ballots uncounted in of the provincial election – although none were significant enough to change the results.

Anton Boegman says Elections BC investigates errors to “identify key lessons learned” in order to improve training, modify processes or make recommendations for legislative changes to ensure “errors can be avoided in the future “.

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

These errors prompted British Columbia Conservative Leader John Rustad to call for an independent review.

On Tuesday, Premier David Eby said his party “will propose the creation of a multi-party committee to review the systems used, the actions taken by Elections BC, hear from experts and recommend improvements for future elections.”

Eby said he remained confident in the outcome of the election.

“At the same time, it is clear that we must review the processes, technologies and systems used to count votes accurately and build public trust,” he said in a statement.

Elections BC announced Monday that it had discovered that a ballot box containing 861 votes was not counted in the recent provincial election, as well as other errors, including 14 unreported votes in a crucial riding narrowly won by the BC NDP. British Columbia.

The omission of the ballot box did not affect the outcome in the Prince George-Mackenzie electoral district where the ballot box was found, according to Elections BC.

Unrestored box

At a news conference Tuesday, Boegman said the uncounted ballot box had not gone missing, despite some speculation, and was sealed and in the secure custody of the precinct elections official. He said the box was at an advance polling station.

“After the first day of early voting, all ballots from this office were removed from the tabulator ballot box and stored securely in a sealed ballot box at the district office,” he said, emphasizing that this was the process followed throughout the vote. BC after each day of advance voting.

On the second day, polling station officials determined that a ballot that had been placed in the tabulator box had not been tabulated, Boegman said.

He said Elections BC then issued an order requiring all tabulator ballots to be re-compiled on Oct. 17, to ensure the correct results could be reported on election night.

But he clarified that only ballots from the second day of advance voting had been recompiled.

“They should have also included the ballots that were in the sealed ballot box at the district office, but they didn’t, and that was a mistake by the team in that district,” Boegman said .

Elections BC said the 14 unreported votes in Surrey-Guildford were discovered last week during preparations for a judicial recount in the riding, where Garry Begg’s 27-vote victory propelled the NDP to a majority government. ‘a seat.

Judicial relations

Boegman said he was confident that election officials found all the “ anomalies ” in the election count.

He said the vote was administered by about 17,000 workers, less than half of what would have been needed under the old paper-based system, many of whom worked long hours on a day when an atmospheric river surged across the southwest British Columbia.

He said election results will be released Tuesday in 90 of the province’s 93 ridings, while recounts will take place in Surrey-Guildford and Kelowna Center on Nov. 7 and 8, and in Prince George-Mackenzie before the 12th. november.