Advance polls, huge voter turnout blamed for long night in Kootenay-Columbia riding
By Brendan Quinn
It was a stressful night with many ups and downs for Wayne Stetski, leaving some voters scratching their heads as to why it took so long for the final results to come in for Kootenay-Columbia.
It wasn’t until after 1 a.m. MT that Stetski was finally sure of his victory over David Wilks, despite some media outlets outright declaring the Conservative candidate as the winner.
“I thought it was a bit premature, watching the numbers and numbers of polls that hadn’t been reported yet,” Stetski said.
“Right up until the end I wanted to let the volunteers go home.”
“It was quite the interesting time, heard he [Wilks] gave a victory speech which I thought it was premature,” he added.
As to when he finally knew, for sure, that he had been elected, Stetski said it was after he had left the party and went home.
“It wasn’t until about 1 o’clock or so. I got home here and my youngest called and said that he was tracking Global and they had now declared me elected.”
The question on a lot of minds in the area is, why did it take so long to tally the votes?
In such a neck and neck race, it really did come down to the wire.
Rob Switzer, Returning Officer for Elections Canada in Nelson, explained that an overwhelming number of votes from the advance polls and those coming in Monday night made for a lot of work for his small team.
This, combined with the incredibly close race between Stetski and Wilks, made for a busy and stressful evening for the teams at Elections Canada.
“As to why did it take so long, that was largely because there were so many votes to count. I had one advance poll that had close to 1500 voters to count,” Switzer said.
The need to accurately tally and combine the votes from the special ballots, which saw unprecedented numbers of voters, increased the amount of time it took to get the final results.
“In addition [to the advance polls] the special ballots that were counted in my office, close to 2500 of those, were counted by six teams. Those were combined with national results,” Switzer said.
Switzer also explained that the meticulous process of accurately counting votes is limited by legislation that mandates a specific process.
In the end though, Stetski is pleased with his victory, despite his party losing to the Liberals in the grand scheme of things.
“It’s a little disappointing. Initially, the thinking was that we would have either formed government or been part of a coalition government with the Liberals. We were a bit surprised to see the red wave move across Canada the way it did,” Stetski said.
However, Stetski said he was glad to see so many people in the riding voting for change, and that he and his team are “very happy to be a part of that change.”
He added that he plans on working closely with the Liberals to make sure Parliament focuses on good ideas.
“Politics ends with the counts on election night, and my job now is to represent everyone, and that’s what I intend to do. Give them a strong voice in Ottawa.”
