It is Sunday October 25th, the weather has turned very cold and we are all sadly saying goodbye to the perfect summer. It is so easy to get out,visit with one's friends, hike, bike and generally live a good life when warm sunshine is plentiful.
So Premier John Horgan pulled a fast one on the holders of balance of power, the Green Party. He decided to call an election, just 1 week after The Green Party had elected Sonia Furstenau as party leader. The Greens scrambled to run a candidate in most of the 87 ridings. The election was held yesterday, thousands of voters voted by mail, those votes will not be counted until November 6th.
Since I have worked for Elections BC and also for Elections Canada I was very interested in the differences in running a Pandemic Election.
Voters were encouraged to bring their own pen or pencil and of course to wear a mask.
There were not 2 employees at each Poll Station as 2 people cannot physically distance, there was only the Returning Officer. That actually seemed to work quite well and also meant that only 1/2 the people needed to be trained. I wonder if the training was all done online? That would have been the obvious solution. Hey that would have meant less $s going out to pay the workers.
I decided that I wanted my vote to be counted on Election Day so that is the day I voted. At 8:30AM there was only one other voter in the entire room of about 8 polling stations. Of course she was at the same poll as I needed to vote at. It looked like it was going to be a very boring day for the workers. My friend Spring did mention that when she went at noon to drop off her mail in vote there was a long line to get in.
The Election was on a Saturday instead of our usual Tuesday. I expect the reason for that is due to CoVid, schools are not open to the public during school hours. There were no advance polls in schools either.
The other huge difference was that the left leaning NDP Party won its first 2nd term ever. It appears that many British Columbians trust Premier Horgan and feel that he and his party are doing a great job of managing the pandemic. Well, that is ... other than calling an unnecessary election.
