Saturday October 24, 2020 | VICTORIA, BC
by Mary P Brooke, editor | Island Social Trends
Today Saturday October 24, 2020 is the 42nd General Election Day in BC.
Voting Places are open 8 am to 8 pm. Bring ID and/or your Where to Vote Card (that would have arrived in the mail).
Locations of Voting Places are online. This link goes directly to a map while this link has all the information about Where to Vote before getting to the map. Voters have an assigned voting place on General Voting Day.
Normally it is faster to vote at your assigned voting place, but you can vote at another voting place if it is more convenient to you.
What to bring when you vote in person:
- Valid ID that shows your name and home address.
- Your Where to Vote card. Look for it in the mail from Elections BC before advance voting starts. Bringing it with you to the voting place will make voting faster and easier.
- Your own pen or pencil to mark your ballot, if you wish.
- A mask to wear in the voting place, if you wish. Elections BC encourages voters to wear a mask when they vote to protect others. You will not be asked to remove your mask to vote. Learn more about voting safely and COVID-19.
You can still use your vote-by-mail package:
If you requested a vote-by-mail package, you have until 8 p.m. Pacific time on General Voting Day to return it to Elections BC. That can be done at any Voting Place (8 am to 8 pm) or District Electoral Office (8 am to 8 pm).
Or on October 24 you can use the nearest drop-off location. In Greater Victoria there is only one location which is at 403 – 771 Vernon Avenue. In Nanaimo the drop-off is at 460 Selby Street. Other drop-off locations today in BC.
Note: Vote-by-mail packages cannot be dropped off at Service BC locations in Surrey, Vancouver or Burnaby. Voters in these areas wishing to return their package in person should return it at a district electoral office or voting place.
If you decide to vote in person instead today, just destroy your mail-in voting package, says Elections BC. They say they have strident methods for checking to see that people don’t vote twice.
Voting results
After voting closes at 8 p.m. Pacific time, preliminary results will be available at results.elections.bc.ca. That will be comprised of the advance-vote ballot count and the election-day ballot count.
Ballots that were cast with the vote-by-mail process will officially be counted starting after 13 days (November 5), though some packages are already being opened (at District Electoral Offices) for pre-processing (separating the delivery sleeve from the ballot-containing sleeve). It could then take up to another week (to November 12 or so) to know the full results of any or all of the 87 ridings.
Results analysis:
In the last election in May 2017, 1,207,375 voters cast a ballot on General Election Day. Due to the high volume of advance voting this year (681,055 advance votes cast — which is up from 617,175 voters in 2017) and mail-in ballots this year in high volume due to the pandemic (up to 700,000) it could mean unclear results in any of the 87 ridings on election night.
The BC NDP Leader says he called this snap election as a way for voters to indicate which way they want the province to head as we all continue through the pandemic.
Look for election results analysis here on the www.islandsocialtrends.com website, both tonight and through the weeks ahead until final results are known. Thank you for following Island Social Trends!
