Thursday June 5, 2025 | VICTORIA, BC
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
A series of in-depth reports about the handling of the 2024 provincial general election was delivered yesterday by Elections BC to the Special Committee on Democratic and Electoral Reform.
The committee is comprised of MLAs from all three provincial parties: NDP (government), Conservative, and Green.
The committee is chaired by Jessie Sumner (NDP MLA for Surrey-Newton) who is also the Parliamentary Secretary for Anti-Racism Initiative. The Deputy Chair is Ward Starmer (Conservative).
Questions were asked of the committee by MLAs George Anderson (NDP), Sheldon Clare (Conservative), Amna Shah (NDP), and Rob Botterell (Green).
Four-hour public meeting:
With only a short break in the four-hour meeting on June 5, there were two reports delivered to the committee by Elections BC representatives, each report followed by questions from the committee.
Several key points were raised by Elections BC and the committee members about successes, shortfalls and possible failures of the independent agency to deliver the process and results of BC’s 43rd election.
Elections BC was represented by Anton Boegman, Chief Electoral Officer and Daniel Posey, Director of Voter Services. Andrew Watson, Senior Director of Communications and Charles Porter, Deputy Chief Electoral Officer, Electoral Finance & Operations, also participated.
The public presentation was followed by an in-camera session yesterday afternoon.
More civic education needed:
Among the recommendations described by Anton Boegman, Chief Electoral Officer, was that the process of voting and civic participation must become “a greater part of the story” during the active election phase.
“We need to be more proactive,” said Boegman. Specifically, he said there should be weekly news conferences with media throughout an active campaign period at which ‘how to vote’ and other basics of the election process would be highlighted and explored as well as addressing any “new considerations” that may arise.
“Process has to become a greater part of the story,” Boegman told the Special Committee on Democratic and Electoral Reform.That’s in comparison to having most of the election news being generated by parties and candidates during the campaign period.
The usual sort of media coverage — in particular fueled by the BC Legislative Press Gallery reporting style — tends to be temporal, issues-based and often adversarial or even confrontational. While that is important to the momentum and coverage of a campaign, it is not always what voters want to hear or need to understand.
Boegman noted that civil society groups, regulators, the media and academics also attempt to take part in what results as a mix of basic civics (aka ‘how to vote’) information that is made available to the public during an election.
This sort of media coverage would be in addition to the by-postal-mail public awareness campaign that in 2024 was delivered to 2.1 million residents.
Trendsetting:
Island Social Trends has always included an ‘explainer’ form of journalism in our delivery to readers, so that people understand the real message of a story compared to just headlines that are temporal or even sensational.
When it comes to ‘process’ as part of the election story, indeed, it’s something that this publication has been doing and now Elections BC has stated it as a preferred part of their work during elections.
However, it should be noted that professional media outlets do try to adhere to doing coverage of emerging news for the benefit of clarity to the public and accountability of candidates and parties. Media should not be expected to become an educational arm of Elections BC or the government unless there is advertising support for that specific function.
If Elections BC needed to ‘jazz up’ their news conferences about general information they might find that to be an uncomfortable balance between news coverage and public relations.
BC schools should be doing their part:
The BC Elections report included that British Columbians age 18 to 24 turn out to vote at a rate below the provincial average.
Boegman emphasized that education about civics and voting needs to be much stronger in the BC K-12 education system. That’s even while having noted the various things that are already done in schools including mock elections. Presently the method of including civics is up to teachers within broad Education ministry curriculum directives on that topic.
“Curriculum in schools (needs to) focus on some of the basics of our democracy,” said Boegman.
The basics would be the structure of government, the composition of the legislative assembly, when and how elections are held, the political process that is part of elections, the identification and description of major registered political parties, and so on. Teaching of the basics would intentionally be unbiased from a political perspective.
Electoral reform:
Other significant components of the June 5 presentation included details about the various referendum exercises that have been held in BC regarding electoral reform, including in 1996, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2009, and 2018.
There was a note (more so from the committee members) that the actual legislative chamber is already ‘full’ with 93 MLA seats, and that adding more representatives (as might be the case with proportional representation) would be a physical challenge.
Safety of ballot boxes:
Elections BC representatives explained the processes by which ballot boxes and ballots are kept secure during the voting process. This was in the context of concerns that arose during the October 2024 election during which one box went missing and others were not initially counted.
Most accessible and adaptable in the country:
The provincial election process in BC is the most accessible of any province in Canada, said Boegman. That was in reference to use of electronic ballot processing that — he emphasized — is not connected to the Internet.
The electronic process includes ‘voter book’ records presented to election workers on laptops that are updated in real time to prevent anyone from more than once.
The electronic process also allows for printing ballots ‘on demand’, which enables voting by any registered voter at any district electoral office. This helps with the fluidity of some voting clusters such as university students who may very likely be voting at a location that is different from their permanent home address.
On election night October 19, 2024, there were 1.7 million ballots counted in one hour, due to the electronic technology. Boegman mentioned some of the technological partners who have contributed software or systems including: Data Fix using tabulators first used in Ontario provincial elections; Elections Canada; Media Ecosystem Observatory at McGill University; Safyre Labs; and others that are listed in one of the reports.
Advance voting:
Advance voting has become more popular over time. In the 2024 election, for the first time the number of advance votes cast exceeded the votes cast on election day, it was outlined in yesterday’s presentation.
Advance voting is generally about providing more convenience to voters (and clearly people are taking advantage of that) but it also assists parties and candidates in knowing (through info provided from Elections BC) as to which voters have cast their ballots, which allows campaigns to focus on those who haven’t yet voted.
Voting places:
Elections BC seems to take pride in allowing local election officials choosing or providing recommendations on the locations used for advance and election-day voting. However, in some cases there have not been consideration for easy access by public transportation as well as building structure for accessibility access.
On Voter Information cards having one location shown for advance and another for election-day voting might be confusing and even deter some voters who may become confused or lose their info card, or find one location less accessible than another. Revised wording on the Elections BC information cards might better held voters understand their voting place options.
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