Garry Begg has officially claimed Surrey-Guildford back for the NDP by a margin of 22 votes, following a just-concluded official recount.
The recount ended with 8.947 votes for Begg, to 8,925 for Conservative challenger Honveer Singh Randhawa. After Elections BC finished its final count of election results on Oct. 28, Begg held a 27-vote lead. That was later shaved to just 21 votes after the discovery of 28 initially unreported ballots.
Counsel for both candidates were on hand at the recount and have agreed with the results.
The win officially secures a majority government for David Eby and the B.C. NDP, with 47 seats in the 93-seat legislature.
More to come.
The recount 91ÂãÁÄÊÓƵ” which had already been ordered because the margin of victory was less than 1/500th of the total votes cast 91ÂãÁÄÊÓƵ” began with counting those unreported ballots and will work its way through all 19,090 ballots, including more than 1,600 votes that were cast outside of the riding.
The recount is being held in a warehouse in Newton, where it continued all day Thursday (Nov. 7) and restarted at 9 a.m. Friday. First thing in the morning, it was reported there was one more box of ballots to count; now a reported "discrepancy" has that up to five boxes remaining to count.
The high-ceilinged warehouse has been divided into two parts by makeshift walls, which separate the makeshift courtroom from people counting ballots.
The teams of counters 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.
Jill Lawrance, executive director of electoral operations at Elections BC said Thursday (Nov. 8) 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."
-With files from the Canadian Press
