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It’s the last full day of campaigning in the British Columbia election before the final polling day on Saturday, when most ballots will be counted by hand.
Elections BC has confirmed that votes cast on Election Day will be counted manually, in a departure from 2024, when electronic tabulators were used to count paper ballots for the first time in a general election.
That was considered a success in Elections BC’s report on the polls, but the agency said in a statement that it reverted to a manual count due to “the short time frame and complex operational logistics of a snap election.”
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It says paper ballots cast at pre-polling offices and at district polling offices will be counted using electronic tabulators, and it expects those results to be reported first.
Elections BC also says the election night count does not include absentee or main-in ballots that will be counted on the final count from Nov. 6 to 10.
Forward numbers released Thursday were down more than 11 percent compared to 2024, bucking a two-decade upward trend.
There were more than 891,000 preliminary votes cast from Friday to Wednesday, representing about 24 percent of all registered voters.
That compares with more than a million early votes in 2024, when numbers increased 49 percent over the previous election.
Elections BC’s report on the 2024 election says electronic tabulation will allow the first preliminary results to be reported within five minutes of the polls closing, and 59 per cent of preliminary results reported within half an hour.
“In recent elections, first results were usually reported about 45 minutes after the close of the polls,” it said.
& copy 2026 The Canadian Press
