The existence of a ballot box that went uncounted in the constituency of Prince George-Mackenzie was discovered when data showed that the number of counted ballots didn’t match the number of people who cast vote, according to a new report on the 2024 provincial election.
On election night, a ballot box containing 861 votes went uncounted though a partial judicial recount increased Conservative victor Kiel Giddens’ margin of victory over second-place NDP candidate Shar McCrory.
Prince George-Mackenzie covers the northern and western portions of the City of Prince George, as well as places like Mackenzie, McLeod Lake, Bear Lake, Summit Lake, Salmon Valley, Nukko Lake and Reid Lake.
On Tuesday, May 28, British Columbia’s chief electoral officer Anton Boegman issued his first report looking back at the 2024 provincial election.
One section of that report goes into detail about issues that occurred during the Oct. 19 election, including the uncounted ballots.
Boegman’s report said that the issue of uncounted ballots was first discovered at Elections BC on Oct. 30,
Staff were preparing for judicial recounts in Surrey-Guildford and Kelowna Centre when it was observed that the number of ballots counted in the constituency of Surrey City Centre did not match the number of voters who cast ballots.
“Voter strike-off data indicated that 14 voters from (Surrey-Guildford) had voted at a voting place in (Surrey City Centre), but no (Surrey-Guildford) results were reported for that voting place,” the report said.
After that discovery, Elections BC started a province-wide review which revealed uncounted out-of-district votes in Coquitlam-Burke Mountain, Surrey City Centre, Surrey-White Rock, West Vancouver-Sea to Sky and Boundary-Similkameen.
It was at this point that the uncounted ballot box in Prince George-Mackenzie was discovered.
“The uncounted box was from advance voting and contained 861 ballots. This box was one of two boxes used at that advance voting place,” the report stated.
“After the first day of voting the ballots in this box had been sealed and securely stored at the district office. On the second day of advance voting, a ballot was inserted into the new ballot box without being tabulated.
“With no way to identify which ballot had not gone through the tabulator, election officials noted the ballot box had one untabulated ballot in it. The box was also sealed and securely stored at the district office.”
While Boegman issued an order allowing officials in Prince George-Mackenzie to reset the vote tabulator and re-insert all the ballots to be counted, the report said the order was not followed correctly and the ballot box from the first day of advance voting was not included when results were recounted.
After this happened, Boegman directed the electoral officer for Prince George-Mackenzie to request a judicial recount covering just the ballots that went uncounted.
A review of these errors, the report said, showed that the officials responsible for reporting out-of-district votes “did not do so completely.” The electoral officers for these districts did not catch the errors during quality control checks.
Exacerbating these issues were long working hours for workers on election day, extreme weather on election day and the complexity of the vote-anywhere system.
While a report on developing a system that would compare the number of cast ballots to the number of voters was ordered, it was not completed until after the final count.
To address these issues, Boegman said Elections BC will take three actions for future elections.
Going forward, the reporting of results for so-called “full-tech voting places” will be automated.
Also, the quality assurance process for elections will be improved to make sure that all ballot boxes have been counted and all out-of-district votes have been reported.
Finally, new training methods will be introduced to make sure election officials don’t repeat the same mistakes in future elections.
