Garry Begg is confident that a judicial recount will confirm him as elected in Surrey-Guildford, a riding decided by a razor-thin margin Monday (Oct. 28) with a tally of 226 absentee ballots.
The final count gave the NDP incumbent 8,938 votes, just 27 ahead of the 8,911 earned by Conservative opponent Honveer Singh Randhawa, and exactly 46.95 per cent of the 19,039 ballots cast in a riding where the results flipped nine days after election night (Oct. 19).
Elections BC rules say a judicial recount is triggered when the difference between the first two candidates is less than 1/500th of the total ballots considered. In Surrey-Guildford it took a margin of less than 38 votes to trigger a judicial recount, to take place sometime over the next two weeks, as determined by a judge, details to come.
“I think we were surprised and pleased at the outcome, it was a long time coming but yeah, we’re where we want to be," Begg told the Now-Leader on Tuesday (Oct. 28).
"There is a judicial recount which is a thing that automatically happens, but traditionally there’s no change in the outcome of that, so I’m heartened by that and obviously I trust the judiciary to confirm it."
A judicial recount is conducted by the Supreme Court of British Columbia, and may include some or all of the ballots and certification envelopes for an election. A judicial recount will also take place in the Kelowna Centre riding.
Confirmed Monday just before 7 p.m., Begg's election victory gave David Eby and the NDP a majority government in B.C., with 47 seats.
In Surrey-Guildford, Begg had initially lost the vote count on election night (Oct. 19), falling short by 103 ballots. But, during mail-in vote counting over the weekend, Begg moved to within 12 votes of Conservative Honveer Singh Randhawa. By the end of Saturday (Oct. 26), Begg had climbed to 8,809 votes, compared to Randhawa's 8,821 — closing the original 103-vote gap.
That left just absentee ballots to count, a task that began Monday morning, with results updated hourly on the Elections BC website and drama unfolding in real time as political observers crunched the numbers.
Begg called it "an election unlike any other that I’ve experienced in B.C.," with results too close to call until Monday.
"In some ridings, the results were unpredictable," he said. "I love Surrey. This will be my third term, right, so it feels good. There’s so much going on in Surrey as you know, all the time, so much change and so much growth, but we have to be very careful about how we move forward.”
- with files from Tom Zytaruk, Julie MacLellan
