Recounts may not change election results very often, but BC political scientist David Black says they play an increasingly vital role in demonstrating the integrity of elections.

“There’s the quality control, the quality assurance, the self-correcting nature of our system that shows up and demonstrates that it works,” said Black, an associate professor at Royal Roads University of Greater Victoria.

Premier David Eby’s NDP claimed victory Monday in British Columbia’s Oct. 19 election, but the counting is not over.

Two judicial recounts were triggered at the end of the “final count”, by the 27-vote victory of an NDP candidate in Surrey-Guildford and by the 38-vote victory of a Conservative candidate in Kelowna Centre.

Elections BC says precinct election officials must request a judicial recount if the margin of victory is within 1/500th of all ballots counted in the precinct.

Recounts are conducted by a judge of the British Columbia Supreme Court and may include all or part of the ballots from an election.

Elections BC said in a written response that the timing of the recount would depend on the presiding judge.

Black said manual recounts were originally necessary to check for human errors in manual tabulation.

But Black said the need for recounts has not diminished with the advent of digital and automatic counting. Instead, it has grown, with voter skepticism rising about poorly understood technology.

Recounts – conducted by hand in the presence of human tellers, visibly checking each ballot – are “the most visible and publicly accessible parts” of an election operation to assure the public that their votes are counted accurately , he said.

“At the end of the day, democracy is an act of faith,” Black said. “More than two million people voted in the last election in British Columbia, and democracy is a kind of black box. You vote, the machine does its job, and the result is an outcome that has a significant effect on your life.

“The distance between your vote – among two million – and this government on the other side, is long. And it really depends on your confidence that our nonpartisan election administration… (is) doing the job to ensure that integrity. “

There have already been three manual recounts in the British Columbia election and they haven’t had much impact.

Full recounts were triggered in Juan de Fuca-Malahat and downtown Surrey because the NDP was leading by margins less than 100 after the initial count.

But the recount only saw the tallies vary by a few votes, and by the time mail-in and mail-in votes were completed, the NDP had won Juan de Fuca-Malahat and downtown Surrey by 141 votes and 236 votes respectively.

A partial recount also took place in Kelowna Centre, reducing the Conservative lead by four votes. The party still won by 38 votes, even though the judicial recount has now been triggered.

History also shows that it is not common to overturn election counts in British Columbia.

In 2020, a recount was held in West Vancouver-Sea to Sky, where BC Liberal candidate Jordan Sturdy was ahead by 41 votes. The recount increased his margin of victory to 60.

In 2013, a recount was called in Coquitlam-Maillardville where the NDP’s Selina Robinson was ahead by 35 votes; she ultimately won by 41 votes.

There was no judicial recount in 2017.

Former Delta South independent MP Vicki Huntington acknowledged it was unusual for a recount to change election results.

But she has direct experience that this is the case very occasionally.

In the 2009 British Columbia election, Huntington was behind by two votes in the initial count. A judicial recount found she won by 32 votes.

“Obviously, stories matter,” Huntington said.

“I think you’ll always want to have the opportunity to tell, because at the end of the day, you never know if someone was able to damage a machine or if a machine is damaged? So that story needs to be done by a human being to check the efficiency of the machines.”

Huntington said it may take a few more digitally tabulated elections in British Columbia to “really get a sense of how the machines will have changed the process.”

For Black, the need for election authorities to show their processes transparently has only grown, given the “hyper politicization” of election logistics.

He said declarations of confidence in B.C.’s electoral process by Conservative Leader John Rustad and others showed distrust in the province had not reached the level seen in the United States .

But he said agencies such as Elections BC need recounts as visible proof that administrators are looking for — and correcting — errors.

“That’s where the system self-corrects,” says Black. “This is where the system demonstrates its integrity to the public in a visible way.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published October 30, 2024.