Why do ballots from the transit vote take so long to be counted?
Posted May 31, 2015 1:21 pm.
Last Updated May 31, 2015 4:33 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Many people have been wondering when the results from the transit plebiscite will be made public and why it’s taking so long for the numbers to be released.
Jordan Bateman with the “No” side says it’s not usual for the results in this kind of vote to take a little bit longer. “Unfortunately with mail-in ballots this is kind of how it goes. You need to have the privacy for the voter and you don’t want to count votes as you go along because those counts leak out and taint the electoral process.”
Bateman notes there are two main differences between a regular election and a mail-in-ballot. “Elections BC has far fewer people working on this than would normally work in the provincial election.”
“We all had to use three envelopes in order to send in our ballots. Of those three envelopes, two are open now but that final one is unopened. It takes times I guess to open three quarters of a million envelopes.”
Even though the deadline for voting has passed, ballots are still being collected and transported to Victoria according to Don Main with Elections BC. He expects counting to be done by the end of June based on the number of returns.
