The judicial recount for Surrey-Guildford is underway at a warehouse in Newton.
Election officials, scrutineers for the B.C. NDP and B.C. Conservative Party, and B.C. Supreme Court Justice Kevin Loo gathered Thursday for the first day of the two-day recount. Counting is expected to continue until 5 p.m. tonight (Thursday, Nov. 7) and continue again Friday.
Currently, NDP incumbent Garry Begg stands as the riding's MLA-elect, having defeated Conservative candidate by 27 votes after Elections BC's final count wound up on Monday, Oct. 28. Conservative challenger Honveer Singh Randhawa originally led on Election Night, with a 102-vote lead over Begg, but that changed following the count of mail-in and absentee ballots.
Begg's lead then narrowed to 21 following the discovery of 28 out-of-district votes that had originally gone uncounted, discovered during a provincewide review.
The outcome of the recount could prove to be pivotal for the B.C. NDP, since Begg's victory 鈥� if confirmed 鈥� gives the party the 47 seats it needs for a bare majority in the legislature.
Jill Lawrance, executive director of electoral operations at Elections BC, told reporters that officials would be counting 19,090 ballots in the judicial recount, which includes more than 1,600 votes that were cast outside of the riding.
A makeshift courtroom was constructed using wooden desks and grey room dividers where Loo called the session into order on Thursday, before addressing workers and getting the hand-count started.
The teams of counters, who lined tables along the perimeter of the warehouse, were paired with scrutineers from the New Democrats and the B.C. Conservatives and could be seen holding ballots in the air and agreeing on each vote.
Lawrance said teams "make their best assessment of the intent of the voter."
"If scrutineers raise an objection, both parties come to the table and if they agree on the vote, the judge has indicated he doesn't need to see it," Lawrance explained Thursday. "But if there's a disagreement about who that vote should count for, that ballot will be brought to the judge, he will look at the ballot, hear arguments from both sides and determine who the vote should count for."
The recount began with examining the 28 ballots that had yet to be reported because of what Elections BC had called a data-entry mistake.
About an hour after the count began, the judge was informed by officials that there were two contested ballots.
Loo called the court to order and heard statements from counsel for the NDP and B.C. Conservatives, eventually rejecting both ballots.
A full recount is also taking place in Kelowna Central, which was narrowly claimed by the B.C. Conservatives, while a partial recount will take place in Prince George-Mackenzie to tally votes from an uncounted ballot box that was found to contain about 861 votes.
In Kelowna Centre, final counts showed a 38-vote difference between B.C. Conservative candidate Kristina Loewen, who secured 11,031 votes, and B.C. NDP candidate Loyal Wooldridge with 10,993. On Oct. 30, Elections BC identified three out-of district ballots that had not been counted in Kelowna-Centre, bringing the margin to 40 votes.
The Prince George-Mackenzie recount cannot change the outcome, with the B.C. Conservatives ahead by more than 5,000 votes.
Premier David Eby said in a statement Wednesday that the judicial recounts will ensure every vote is counted. After those recounts, he said B.C. residents want to see "urgent action" on priorities including affordability and housing, health care, and building a strong economy.
鈥� with files from Wolf Depner, Tom Zytaruk, Jacqueline Gelineau and the Canadian Press
