Ballots cast Saturday will be hand-counted due to snap election timeline

Elections B.C. will hand-count ballots cast Saturday due to the compressed timeline of the snap election — a shift from 2024, when the province used electronic tabulators for the first time.

Chief Electoral Officer Shipra Verma said the snap election called Sept. 22 gave Elections B.C. just 32 days to prepare. The province needs 3,000 electronic tabulators to machine-count all ballots, but securing and training staff to operate them was not feasible. "With the snap election, we had a short time period," Verma said. "We had to find the right technology and train the people to operate them. Not only do you have to invest in them, you have to worry about storage and maintenance."

Two years ago, Elections B.C. rented tabulators from Elections Ontario and was satisfied with the electronic count. This cycle, the machines are not available due to global supply chain issues and the need to train 17,000 election staff — working between one and six days each — across the province. "Tabulators do have a speed to them," Verma said, "but hand-counting is reliable, and we have processes in place."

Advance votes are being handled differently: 890,000 ballots cast at 300 advance polling stations were machine-tabulated. Those results will be released once polls close Saturday at 8 p.m., within the first hour. Results cannot be released before polls close by law.

Hand-counting at each polling station will follow a set process: an election official unfolds each ballot, announces the candidate name, and an assisting official records the tally. At least one scrutineer representing each party candidate, plus the official responsible for the ballot box and at least one other election official, must be present. Valid ballot marks include an X, check mark, shaded circle, or any other mark. Rejected ballots are those that are not official, unmarked, marked to identify the voter, marked for more than one candidate, or where voter intent is unclear.

Mail-in and absentee ballots will be counted beginning about two weeks after the election, with final results expected by Nov. 10, 2026.