Good morning.
For many British Columbians, our provincial election will feel a long way in the rear-view mirror as attention turns to what will happen in today’s U.S. election.
Some of the bitter politics of personal attack on display south of the border managed to seep into the B.C. campaign, but Conservative Leader John Rustad and his officials stood firm against efforts to undermine the results of this very close election.
Last Monday, when the final tally of the votes was finished, a count that flipped a Conservative seat to the NDP, Mr. Rustad issued a statement explicitly noting, “I accept the results of this election.” In elections past, a conceding candidate wouldn’t have felt the need to spell that out.
So the news Monday that Elections BC missed counting 14 ballots in Surrey-Guildford, a riding the NDP has won by only 24 votes, and also missed 861 ballots in a Prince George area riding landed with an especially loud thud. The missed ballots will make no difference to either riding’s outcome – the Conservative candidate won the Prince George seat by more than 5,000 votes.
But it prompted Mr. Rustad to call for an independent review of the agency to shed light on how this could have happened.
“This is an unprecedented failure by the very institution responsible for ensuring the fairness and accuracy of our elections,” he wrote on the social-media platform X.
“At a time when confidence in election integrity is more fragile than ever before, British Columbians deserve assurance that every vote counts and that these errors are corrected.”
Chief Electoral Officer Anton Boegman said in a statement the discovery was made through the agency’s own internal review process.
“Our elections rely on the work of over 17,000 election officials from communities across the province. Unfortunately, unintentional human errors do occur in administering the vote,” Mr. Boegman wrote.
The Oct. 19 election delivered some of the closest races in B.C. history. The fate of two NDP-held ridings hung on an automatic recount and the tally of absentee and mail-in ballots. By the time that process was finished last week, those two ridings safely remained in NDP hands.
But two other ridings – both held by Conservatives after election night – are now the subject of judicial recounts later this week: The NDP flipped-Surrey Guildford while the Conservatives retain Kelowna Centre, but only by 38 votes.
The judicial recounts are not expected to change the results: 47 seats for the NDP, 44 for the Conservatives and two for the Greens. That gives the NDP the barest of majorities – just one seat.
Premier David Eby has said he will call the legislature back at some point this fall, but his government will not be proposing any new legislation. Instead, the session will be aimed at installing a Speaker. The Speaker is, by convention, elected from the government benches, but the NDP would prefer not to give up one of its MLAs for the non-partisan role, leading to the potential for some tie votes.
Instead, Mr. Eby acknowledged his party is speaking with other MLAs in hopes of attracting one of them to the Speaker’s chair, a feat the party managed in 2017 when the legislature was similarly tied.
The NDP has also reached out to the two Green MLAs. Both are rookies. Party leader Sonia Furstenau was defeated, but will remain as leader as the Greens figure out how to use their considerable leverage.
Rob Botterell, who will represent Saanich North and the Islands for the Greens, has a long history working with government, though he has never held elected office. He worked for the Ministry of Finance back when the Social Credit government of the 1980s was in power, and he was appointed by the subsequent NDP government of the 1990s to develop the province’s freedom of information law. He’s worked as a financial comptroller for the TD Bank, and served as legal counsel for First Nations and local governments.
Jeremy Valeriote, the MLA-elect for the riding of West Vancouver–Sea to Sky, is a geological engineer whose resumé includes environmental consulting and serving in local government.
Both declined to answer questions about what their conversations with the NDP involve.
“I can say with enthusiasm that we are definitely in discussions,” Mr. Botterell said with a laugh. “It’s really exciting.”
This is the weekly British Columbia newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.