Thousands of votes still to be tallied along with Kelowna Centre’s partial recount

Kelowna Centre’s partial recount won’t trigger a full recount, but there could still be more vote recounting to come in the BC election. A ballot error, likely caused by a mistake by an election official, means there is going to be a partial recount in Kelowna Centre, Elections BC said. In Kelowna Centre, BC Conservative candidate Kristina Loewen is ahead of BC NDP candidate Loyal Wooldridge by just 148 votes. There are two other ridings, Surrey City Centre and Juan De Fuca-Malahat, getting an automatic recount because the difference between the top two candidates was less than 100 votes. Although these recounts might seem like the end of the election, there are still 65,000 mail-in and absentee ballots that need to be counted over the weekend. “The Kelowna Centre partial recount will not trigger a full recount. However, all electoral districts still have mail-in and absentee ballots left to count, including Kelowna Centre,” Andrew Watson from Elections BC said in an emailed statement to iNFOnews.ca. The mail-in and absentee ballots, along with the three recounts, will be counted between Oct. 26 and 28. If after the final count is done the difference between the top two candidates in a riding is less than 0.2 per cent of the total votes cast then there will be a judicial recount in that riding. This is still a close election since Premier David Eby’s NDP nor the BC Conservatives led by John Rustad have the 47 seats needed for a majority. For now, the NPD is elected or leading in 46 of the 93 ridings, while the BC Conservatives have 45 seats, and two members of the Green Party have been elected. To contact a reporter for this story, email Jesse Tomas mailto:jtomas@infonews.ca  or call 250-488-3065 or email the editor mailto:news@infonews.ca . You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom mailto:tips@infonews.ca  and be entered to win a monthly prize draw. Find our Journalism Ethics policy here. https://infotel.ca/newsitem/code-of-ethics/it106782 We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor in the link above. SUBSCRIBE to our awesome newsletter here https://infotel.ca/newsletter .