B.C.'s chief electoral officer defends election integrity as premier proposes all-party review into counting

British Columbia's chief electoral officer says "extremely challenging weather conditions" and a new voting system factored into human errors that saw hundreds of ballots go uncounted in the provincial election — though none were large enough to change results. 

Anton Boegman says Elections B.C. is investigating the mistakes to "identify key lessons learned" in order to improve training, change processes or make recommendations for legislative change to ensure "errors can be prevented in the future."

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

The errors prompted B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad to call for an independent review.

On Tuesday, Premier David Eby said his party "will propose an all-party committee to examine the systems used, steps taken by Elections B.C., hear from experts, and recommend improvements for future elections."

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

"At the same time, it's clear we need to review the processes, technologies and systems used to tally votes accurately and support public confidence," he said in a statement.

In an interview with Gloria Macarenko, the host of CBC's On The Coast, Rustad said that an all-party committee might mean partisan politics comes into play given the NDP has secured a majority and would dictate committee appointments.

He reiterated his call for an independent review and asserted that he was not disputing the outcome of the election.

"Democracy is a delicate structure, if you want to call it that," he said. "And if we do not have confidence in our democratic processes, we are in serious trouble. And I don't want to be doing anything that's going to undermine the process."

Elections B.C. announced Monday that it had discovered a ballot box containing 861 votes wasn't counted in the recent provincial election, as well as other mistakes — including 14 votes going unreported in a crucial riding narrowly won by the B.C. NDP.

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

At a news conference on Tuesday, Boegman said the uncounted ballot box had not gone missing, despite some speculation, and was sealed and in the secure custody of the district electoral officer. He said the box was at an advance voting station. 

"After the first day of advance voting, all ballots from that station, they were taken out of the tabulator ballot box and they were securely stored in a sealed ballot box at the district office," he said, noting this was the process taken throughout B.C. following each day of advance voting.