B.C. smashes advance voting record with a million ballots already cast

Elections BC says a record number of British Columbians have already cast their ballots in advance voting before Saturday’s provincial election.

The elections body says just over a million people have voted, representing more than 28 per cent of all registered electors and putting the province on track for big overall turnout.

They include about 223,000 people who voted on the final day of advance voting on Wednesday, the last of six days of advance polls, shattering the one-day record set just a day earlier by more than 40,000 votes.

Some ridings have already seen turnout of more than 35 per cent. 

The previous record for advance voting in a B.C. election was set in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when about 670,000 people voted early, representing about 19 per cent of registered voters. 

Total turnout in the 2020 election was 54 per cent, down from about 61 per cent in 2017.

Elections BC Communications Director Andrew Watson says the trend towards early voting has been a long time coming.

“If you go back to provincial elections in B.C. in the early 2000s, around 10 per cent of all ballots cast were cast at advance voting — and that increased election over election. Last time, in 2020, we saw around 35 per cent of the ballots cast at advanced voting,” said Watson.

He says Elections BC set out with the goal of trying to serve voters at polling stations within five minutes, and feedback about advance voting — especially in terms of wait times — was mainly positive.

Environment and Climate Change Canada issued a Special Weather Statement Thursday morning, warning of “prolonged heavy rain this weekend and strong winds” on Election Day. But Watson says Elections BC has contingency plans if voting places lose power.

“We’ve been working with BC Hydro to make sure they’re aware of all of our voting locations so that if there’s a power outage, we can make sure that we’re working with them to restore service as quickly as possible,” said Watson. 

“We also have paper-based backups for all of our processes in a voting place. So if we do lose power for a short period, we can go to those paper-based processes if necessary,” he added.

Kyle Donaldson of BC Hydro tells 1130 NewsRadio that crews will be working “around the clock” Saturday to attend to fallen trees and branches and restore power where outages happen.

The final election date is Oct. 19.