Elections BC says all votes cast on election day will be tallied manually, after a 2024 shift to electronic tabulators.
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Elections BC says all votes cast on election day in British Columbia’s election will be tallied by hand.
The agency says the manual count is a change from 2024, when electronic tabulators were used to count paper ballots for the first time in a general election. Elections BC says that earlier approach was described as a success in its report on the polls, but it is going back to a manual count for the 2026 snap election, citing “short time frames and complex operational logistics.”
Elections BC says paper ballots cast at advance polling stations and at district electoral offices will be counted using electronic tabulators, and it expects those results to be reported first.
The agency also says the election-night count will not include absentee or main ballots. It says those ballots will be tallied at a final count scheduled Nov. 6 to Nov. 10.
Advance voting numbers released Thursday showed more than 891,000 advance votes cast from Friday to Wednesday, representing about 24 per cent of all registered voters. The agency says that compares with more than one million advance votes cast in 2024, when advance voting numbers increased by 49 per cent over the previous election.
Elections BC’s report on the 2024 election says electronic tabulation allowed the first preliminary results to be reported within five minutes of polls closing, and that 59 per cent of preliminary results were reported within half an hour, whereas Elections BC says that in past elections first results typically started to be reported around 45 minutes after polls closed.
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