B.C. Liberal leader Christy Clark shares a laugh with Jim Benninger during a campaign stop in Courtney, B.C., on May 8, 2017.JONATHAN HAYWARD/The Canadian Press
The BC Liberal candidate in a Vancouver Island riding that the party lost by just nine votes has requested a recount of the ballots, as absentee votes and potential recounts in several close ridings leave the results of this week's provincial election up in the air.
That means the ballots cast Tuesday in Courtenay-Comox will be recounted beginning May 22 at the same time as Elections BC counts absentee and mail-in ballots across the province. That process is expected to be finished by May 24.
The Liberals won 43 seats, one short of a bare majority, while the NDP won 41 and Green three – a result that has already prompted negotiations to win the support of the Greens, who would hold the balance of power. However, if just one riding were to switch from the New Democrats to the Liberals, the governing party would return to majority status and those negotiations would be moot.
In Courtenay-Comox, Elections BC confirmed it received a recount request from Liberal Jim Benninger, who received 10,049 votes compared with 10,058 for the NDP's Ronna-Rae Leonard.
In the days after election day, candidates who lost by fewer than 100 votes can request a recount, as can anyone who alleges problems with how votes were counted.
At the same time as those ballots are counted again, Elections BC will also count 176,000 absentee, mail-in and special ballots in ridings across the province.
The delay is to allow those ballots to be sent from the district where they were cast to the district where voters are registered.
In the 2013 election, much of what is now Courtenay-Comox was known as Comox Valley, which the Liberals won by nearly 2,000 votes. There were about 3,500 absentee, mail-in and special ballots in that riding, which were almost evenly split between the NDP and Liberals, so the result did not change.
Aside from Courtenay-Comox, other close ridings include Maple Ridge-Mission, where the NDP won by 120 votes; Coquitlam-Burke Mountain, where the Liberals won by 170 votes; and Richmond-Queensborough, where Liberals won by 263 votes.
"We've seen close races before. In 2013, we had one judicial recount," said Andrew Watson, a spokesman for Elections BC, referring to Coquitlam-Maillardville, where the NDP's Selina Robinson won by 41 votes. "But certainly, in this election, there's a lot of focus on the absentee ballots."
Absentee ballots have flipped seats before.
On election night in 2009, the NDP's Charlie Wyse was declared the winner in Cariboo-Chilcotin, before the final count declared Liberal Donna Barnett the winner. Also that year, preliminary results put Liberal Wally Oppal ahead by three votes in Delta South before the final count revealed Independent Vicki Huntington had won.
After the final count, a judicial recount is automatic for ridings where the margin of victory is 0.02 per cent of the total ballots cast. In the riding of Comox Valley in 2013, for example, that threshold would have been 64 votes.
With files from Globe staff