BC's Delayed Election Results

The integrity of the vote is the most essential part of the process. Until the polls close there is no way of knowing whether someone who has mailed in a ballot has also voted in person. That means having access to the voting registry from each poll and then having to check the ballots against that record before they can be counted. The rules have always been the same for mail-in ballots. Having thirteen days before the count is to ensure that ballots that are mailed before the election, but making there way through the mail system, get counted. In five years from now Elections BC might have a protocol in place to count all the ballots that have arrived prior to election night, on election night but I would guess that it is more likely they will be looking at at least a day before results can be determined since the checking of mail-ins against the voters list will be a slow one by one process with scrutineers from all parties present. I am sure that would mean that the vast majority of the ballots would get counted immediately and leaving only a few ridings where the results are in dispute, like in previous elections.

I was wrong about the ballots arriving late. The thirteen days are used to collect all the ballots from various locations into a central location. That includes waiting for ballots that were cast in another riding in the province. I think that the time frame can be shortened but without really good security protocols in place you can bet that someone in a future election will try to circumvent the system.

The Election's Act sets out the procedure now in place and it appears to be designed primarily to ensure that double ballots are not counted and voter secrecy is ensured..

Certification envelope preparations for final count

131   (1) Ballot boxes delivered to the district electoral officer under section 126 must be dealt with as follows:

(a) each ballot box must be opened by the district electoral officer;

(b) the election materials, other than the packages containing ballots that were considered in the initial count, must be removed from the ballot box;

(c) the ballot box must be resealed by the district electoral officer in accordance with section 95.

(2) Any package containing certification envelopes must be opened and the envelopes sorted by the following classes:

(a) certification envelopes used to vote under section 98 at a special voting opportunity;

(b) certification envelopes used to vote under section 99 by absentee voting on general voting day in a different voting area;

(c) certification envelopes used to vote under section 100 by absentee voting at general voting for a different electoral district;

(d) certification envelopes used to vote under section 101 by absentee voting at an advance voting opportunity for another electoral district;

(e) certification envelopes used to vote by alternative absentee voting under Division 5 of Part 6;

(f) certification envelopes used in any other circumstances.

(3) Certification envelopes containing ballots for different electoral districts, together with any applications for registration as a voter or updating voter registration information received in relation to them, must be sent to the applicable district electoral officer.

(4) Certification envelopes containing ballots for the electoral district and applications for registration as a voter or updating voter registration information in relation to these must be reviewed and sorted as directed by the chief electoral officer, but the certification envelopes must not be opened until the final count.

Proceedings on final count

132   (1) The final count must proceed as follows:

(a) each class of certification envelopes referred to in section 131 (2) must be considered under section 134;

(b) after a class of certification envelopes is considered under section 134, a ballot account for the class must be prepared in accordance with section 133 (1);

(c) for each class, the certification envelopes to be opened on the final count are to be dealt with in accordance with section 135;

(d) after each class of certification envelopes is dealt with under section 135, the ballot account for the class is to be completed in accordance with section 133 (2);

(e) any recount under section 136 must be conducted in accordance with that section;

(f) the district electoral officer must prepare a summary of the ballot accounts prepared on the initial and the final counts;

(g) the results of the election are to be determined on the basis of the ballot accounts prepared on the initial and final counts.

(2) If it appears from a ballot account prepared in accordance with section 133 (1) that there are so few certification envelopes of a class that the secrecy of the ballots may be at risk, the district electoral officer may authorize the certification envelopes to be combined with those of another class.

(3) If certification envelopes are combined under subsection (2),

(a) the ballot account prepared in accordance with section 133 (1) for the class that has the smaller number of certification envelopes must be attached to the ballot account for the other class, and

(b) the ballot account for the class that has the larger number of certification envelopes must be completed in accordance with section 133 (2) for all combined envelopes.

https://www.bclaws.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/96106_07#sectio...

You're right Ken, the Grens have shown they do have a reason to exist.

Their prime directive to do whatever they can to undermine the NDP and deliver as many extra seats as they can to the conservative  parties.

As NR suugests it us a good thing for prigressive politics to see the Greens dropping a aeat in the latest tally.

nicky wrote:

You're right Ken, the Grens have shown they do have a reason to exist.

Their prime directive to do whatever they can to undermine the NDP and deliver as many extra seats as they can to the conservative  parties.

As NR suugests it us a good thing for prigressive politics to see the Greens dropping a aeat in the latest tally.

The BC Greens exist because the BCNDP gave voters with green values no good reason to vote for them.  It's not as though the BCNDP is simply owed all progressive votes in that province.

Rather than vilifying them, why not admit that their continued vote share means the NDP needs to have a stronger set of policies on green issues to get their votes?

Ken Burch wrote:

nicky wrote:

You're right Ken, the Grens have shown they do have a reason to exist.

Their prime directive to do whatever they can to undermine the NDP and deliver as many extra seats as they can to the conservative  parties.

As NR suugests it us a good thing for prigressive politics to see the Greens dropping a aeat in the latest tally.

The BC Greens exist because the BCNDP gave voters with green values no good reason to vote for them.  It's not as though the BCNDP is simply owed all progressive votes in that province.

Rather than vilifying them, why not admit that their continued vote share means the NDP needs to have a stronger set of policies on green issues to get their votes?

I agree with Ken. 

nicky wrote:

Anyone who thinks the Greens are friends of the NDP should give their heads a good shake.

Of course they are not friends they are the opposition in a legislature. I for one would far prefer to have Horgan pushed by the Green's to do more on the environment than by a Liberal MLA wanting more for Howe Street.

If the NDP delivers on a real green deal they will eat the Green's lunch so it is up to them. There is no need to attack people who hate the BC NDP. It is an autocratic bureaucracy that has alienated many progressive individuals in the province and driven away youth activists for twenty five years. The party is a very tightly controlled machine that allows for no dissent so it has limited appeal for many people trying to take immediate action on climate change. As a political machine it has become successful, now we get to see whether it will do anything meaningful with the absolute power they now have or will they be total incrementalists. Horgan has a change to be as good for the province as Barrett was in his day or he can emulate his late boss Glen Clark. Given he is still surrounded by advisors from the '90's, I am not too optimistic.

kropotkin1951]</p> <p>[quote=nicky wrote:

Anyone who thinks the Greens are friends of the NDP should give their heads a good shake.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Of course they are not friends they are the opposition in a legislature. I for one would far prefer to have Horgan pushed by the Green's to do more on the environment than by a Liberal MLA wanting more for Howe Street.

If the NDP delivers on a real green deal they will eat the Green's lunch so it is up to them. There is no need to attack people who hate the BC NDP. It is an autocratic bureaucracy that has alienated many progressive individuals in the province and driven away youth activists for twenty five years. The party is a very tightly controlled machine that allows for no dissent so it has limited appeal for many people trying to take immediate action on climate change. As a political machine it has become successful, now we get to see whether it will do anything meaningful with the absolute power they now have or will they be total incrementalists. Horgan has a change to be as good for the province as Barrett was in his day or he can emulate his late boss Glen Clark. Given he is still surrounded by advisors from the '90's, I am not too optimistic.

i'm in full agreement with all of that, kropotkin1951.  And, fwiw, I actually wasn't a huge fan of the BC Greens-if I lived there and they hadn't had to pull all their candidates out of the race, I probably would have supported the BC Ecosocialists-it's just that I'm mystified by this idea that they are evil and that their very existence is the result of some sort of nefarious right-wing plot, and by the assumption that the BCNDP was both entitled to they votes the Greens get and justified in the antidemocratic arrogance that cost it huge numbers of progressive voters.

The NDP got a huge majority.  Why are some people here acting like Horgan's party was the victim of an injustice?

nicky wrote:

Yes Bekayne, I was cheering for the Libs in West Van S to S.

Just as the Liberals were likely cheering for the Greens because they know that the more viable the Green Party the more likely it is that the Libs will regain power.

You are being ridiculous if you think the Liberals were not cheering for their candidate to win. It says a lot about your politics that you want more BC Liberal MLAs.

NorthReport wrote:

Some people it seems want to join Trump's Poor Loser Club

You seem to be setting up a Poor Winner's Club.  

There is no reason for BC NDP supporters to be just as hostile to the Greens as they are to the Liberals, and especially never for them to be MORE hostile to the Greens than the Liberals.

Nothing progressive would come of BC politics going back to nothing but the NDP versus the Right.

And it's silly to be lashing out in rage when your party has just won in a landslide.  I mean, shouldn't you be...oh I dunno...happy?

NorthReport wrote:

Ever hear of Dave Barrett. Just the usual idiotic comments.

Of course I've heard of Dave Barrett. Great premier, though it was stupid of him to call an election 2 1/2 years early at a time when he had a solid majority in the legislature.  He lost the last three elections he fought as BCNDP leader in an era when there were no other progressive parties in BC politics at all.  Then he proved he'd have done no better as federal leader than Audrey McLaughlin by losing his riding badly in 1993.

nicky wrote:

Just as the Liberals were likely cheering for the Greens because they know that the more viable the Green Party the more likely it is that the Libs will regain power.

What bizarro world do you live in where the Green Party taking a Liberal riding (West Vancouver-Sea to Sky) would help the Liberal party retake power?

nicky wrote:

I would have thought it was blindingly obvious, Left Turn,  that The Liberals prefer a three way race with the left vote split than a two way race with the Greens marginalized.

That's why I suspect that tactically minded Liberals might have preferred the Greens getting a third seat in WVSTS and being able to claim they held their own rather than losing ground.

And Ken, for you to suggest that The NDP under Dave Barrett would have done worse than under Audrey MCLaughlin is too absurd for words.

Maybe you weren't around in that era but I was. I was an organizer for the NDP in 1972 and was active in his leadership campaign. He was one of the best campaigners ever and Audrey, unfortunately, was one of the worst.

Look, I don't hate Dave Barrett or anything.  My point there is that, faced with the massive anti-NDP blowback caused by three NDP provincial governments(B.C. under Harcourt, Sask under Romanow, and of course Ontario under the same Bob Rae who is now(and probably always was secretly) a Liberal, nobody in charge of the federal party was going to have any chance of avoiding electoral disaster for the party in 1993.

And under the the loudly anti-Quebec Barrett- whose big idea for the Nineties seemed to be trying to pretend that "Western alienation" could somehow be made into a left-of-center politics- the historic breakthrough the NDP had in the Chambly by-election would likely never have happened.  Think of whether the NDP would have ever won any federal seats under Layton or Mulcair if it hadn't.

Dave Barrett was good for his times and place (BC in the early 1970s).  He had no excuse for subjecting the BCNDP to a landslide defeat it never had to experience by calling a provincial election two and a half years early, so early the new riding boundaries that would have helped the party's chances weren't even in place yet.  

And if the NDP hadn't elected a woman as leader, would any women at all still vote for it?  Would they have done that if it had just gone on being white man after white man after white man until Singh, for whatever its worth, finally broke the color bar?  Here's a question that I'd like you to reflect on...if the NDP had been, as it would have been had you had your way, the LAST party to elect a woman as leader, how would the party hold onto any support for women at all- especially if the party was always going to do what you would advocate and keep as much distance from feminism as possible and as much distance from the social movements as possible, remaining in this bland, dreary dead zone you party establishment types have done all you could to keep it in since 1961?

"Staying the course" is a defensible position if your party has been winning solidly for decades- in what universe does it make sense when your party is, as the NDP is on the federal level, on a long slow slide to death?   When there's a good chance it could lose its last seat in Quebec-and thus lose any chance of ever making a comeback there- at the next federal election?  When the election of the supposedly "charismatic" leader the party establishment insisted on as Mulcair's replacement-after letting Mulcair hang on in the job he'd been ousted from for almost two more years rather than giving a new leader the time needed to create their own presence and craft a new strategy- was an absolute disaster in the last election and has led the party to no improvement at all in the polls ever since?

It has to be asked...and I ask this of you as a person who is clearly some sort of voice of the NDP establishment- what is it that you guys think you are defending, here?  What, in the Dipper status quo ante of 2020, other than the BC result, is worth preserving?

And as to the Greens, do you honestly think you could get the votes of the people in BC who back them simply by pounding your fists on the table and screaming at them that they OWE the NDP their support?

As for the NDP being the "last" party to have a woman leader, Ken, who was the woman leader of the Liberals? Perhaps I was hibernating but i believe there are still some women who vote Liberal

Ken, if the NDP made a blunder at the 1975 convention it was in passing over John Harney , not RosemaryBrown.

Harney was brilliant, eloquent and thoroughly bilingual, coming from an old Irish- French family in Quebec City. He made a creditable run, notwithstanding losing his seat in the 1974 election. He could have established the party as a major force in Quebec.

I voted for him at the 1975 leadership convention until he was eliminated and then switched my vote to Broadbent.

If the party chose Rosemary Brown it would have been a colossal blunder. The party was on its knees at the time, having recently lost half its seats.

There is a tendency to look back on Rosemary Brown as a transformative romantic figure but there was a real fear on the convention floor that she would have been an electoral disaster. She came across as very one note and quite shallow intellectually, dogmatic and humourless. Her speeches were little more than a string of slogans and cliches.

The party in that era was much more a farmer/ Labour Party at the time with more members in Saskatchewan than Ontario. Most delegates believed, myself among them, that she would have alienated the party's base.

It was telling that Brown had no support among the MPs and only a couple MLAs  as I recall.and almost no labour or rural support.

It may have been a brave gesture to choose her but I have to agree with what one labour delegate told me at the time: "she will kill the party deader than Christ."

If anything she would have been a more disastrous leader than even Jeremy Corbyn, to give you a parallel I am sure you will appreciate.

I too found Ed Broadbent pretty dull but he was solid and respected. He got the party back on its feet and was a genuine contender for power for a tantalizing year or two. He deserves lots of credit and he was certainly a much better choice than Brown.