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By Liam Verster /Vernon Matters

BC ELECTION 2024

Sandhu widens lead over Giesbrecht in Vernon-Lumby following mail-in ballot count

Oct 27, 2024 | 6:59 AM

VERNON — While mail-in and absentee ballots are not expected to play a role in the local Kamloops ridings where Ward Stamer and Peter Milobar were elected for the Conservatives, the seat is still up for grabs in Vernon-Lumby.

That’s where brief Kamloops-Centre candidate Dennis Giesbrecht was moved to after the demise of the BC United Party and Milobar’s switch to Tory blue.

More mail-in ballots for the provincial election have been counted, including those for the local riding.

ElectionsBC’s update at 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 19, showed that the Vernon-Lumby mail-in ballots were counted, and that the NDP Harwinder Sandhu’s lead increased with those counts.

As it stands, the vote count was as follows:

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• Vernon-Lumby
  • Harwinder Sandhu (NDP) – 11,770 (42.7 per cent)
  • Dennis Giesbrecht (Conservative) – 11,283 (40.94 per cent)
  • Kevin Acton (Unaffiliated) – 4,248 (15.41 per cent)
  • Robert Johnson (Libertarian) – 262 (0.95 per cent)

The Vernon-Lumby mail-in ballots were among 30 communities that had their votes counted Saturday afternoon, including Kelowna Centre and Penticton Summerland. The mail-in ballots for the Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream riding, where Conservative Tara Armstrong held the lead, was not counted Saturday.

In Kelowna Centre, Conservative Kristina Loewen had a slight lead with 10,950 votes compared to NDP candidate Loyal Woolridge, who had 10,878. That riding will be subject to a partial recount Sunday following a one vote discrepancy between the ballot count and the tabulator results.

In Penticton-Summerland, Conservative candidate Amelia Boultbee had a lead of 11,551 votes to the NDP’s Tina Lee, who had 11,197, following the mail-in count.

As of t 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 25, the B.C. NDP still held 46 seats to the Conservative Party of B.C.’s 45. The B.C. Green Party also held onto it’s two seats Saturday afternoon.

• B.C. NDP – 46 seats, 915,248 votes, 44.64 per cent support
• Conservative Party of B.C. – 45 seats, 892,427 votes, 43.53 per cent support
• B.C. Green Party – 2 seats, 167,822 votes, 8.19 per cent support

The mail-in ballot count continues Sunday, Oct. 26, and recounts will go that day as well.

Recounts were automatically triggered in the Juan de Fuca-Malahat and Surrey City Centre ridings as the NDP candidates were leading their Conservative candidates by less than 100 votes. A partial recount in Kelowna Centre was also granted after a one vote discrepancy between ballot counts and a tabulator results was found.

ElectionsBC’s next update on the mail-in ballot counts will be released Sunday afternoon.

The finalized results will be announced Monday, Oct. 28