British Columbians and Hamberites Cast Their Ballots

Photo Credit: The Canadian Press

On Oct. 28, the BC NDP won the 2024 BC provincial election. The party, led by incumbent premier David Eby, won by 44.9 per cent of the popular vote, winning 47 seats overall. The voter turnout was 57.5 per cent. Judicial recounts were announced for the Surrey-Guildford and Kelowna Centre ridings—if the winner of these ridings are unchanged after the judicial recounts, the BC NDP will be able to form a majority government with 47 seats.

The 2024 BC provincial election took place on Oct 19. Heavy rain persisted throughout the day, with rainfall reportedly reaching 250 millimetres. Due to the severe weather, several voting locations were temporarily closed, but reopened by 12pm.

While results of the election were originally planned to be announced on the 19th, no winner was decided. Election BC reported that some ridings were unable to report results, due to a supervisory voting officer having a medical emergency. Elections BC anticipated that the results would be announced on Sunday instead.

However, by the end of the day on Saturday, the BC NDP and BC Conservatives were tied at 40 elected seats each. Because of the tight margins, there needed to be a final count before winners could be announced. Additionally, two ridings needed to have votes recounted. “Once final count is done,” explained BC government communications director Andrew Watson, “then we may also have an automatic judicial recount if the difference between the top two candidates is less than one five-hundredth of the total ballots considered in that district.” By the end of the day on Saturday, the NDP led the Conservatives in the Juan de Fuca-Malahat riding by 20 votes, and in the Surrey City Centre riding by 95 votes. The final vote was counted and results announced on Oct. 28.

The recounts resulted in an NDP majority with 47 seats. The Surrey-Guildford riding where the BC Conservatives were in the lead has flipped, so that the BC NDP is now leading by 18 votes. The Juan de Fuca-Malahat recount resulted in an increased win for the NDP from a 23-vote lead to a 113-vote lead.

Recounts and extreme rainfall were not the only unexpected things that arose during this election cycle. On August 28, 2024, the BC United Party dropped out of the race, giving the BC Conservative Party a boost in polls. The BC United Party, previously known as the BC Liberals, is a party that is typically described as centre-right of the political spectrum. While they were previously called the BC Liberal Party, they are not associated with the centre-left Liberal Party of Canada.

While support for BC United has declined rapidly since 2020, support for the BC Conservatives has grown. In the 2020 provincial election, the BC Conservative Party received less than 2 per cent of votes, winning zero seats. After the rebrand, at least four BC United MLAs defected to the BC Conservatives instead, leading to a surge of support for the Conservatives.

“We cannot give the NDP one more day in power than they absolutely have to have,” BC United leader Kevin Falcon stated in a press conference after dropping out, “and that’s why I made the decision that I made as leader of BC United.” Falcon expressed concern that remaining in the race would split centre-right voters between BC United and BC Conservatives, which may help the BC NDP win the election. Falcon encouraged United voters to vote Conservative instead.

With significant growth from the 2020 election, the BC Conservative Party has won in 40 ridings and is leading in 5 this election. Meanwhile, the BC NDP has seen a seat count decrease from 57 seats in 2020 to 40 elected seats and 6 leading this year.

BC Provincial elections use an electoral system called first-past-the-post, which splits the province into 93 electoral districts. Voters in each electoral district elect one person to represent this district in the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia The candidate with the most votes in a district joins the Legislative Assembly, and the party with the most seats in the Assembly becomes the official ruling party of British Columbia. A party needs to win at least 47 ridings to form a majority, and if no parties are able to get to that number, a coalition between two parties can be formed.

The electoral district that Eric Hamber is in is the Vancouver-Little Mountain District. The Little Mountain candidates consisted of BC Conservative’s John Coupar, BC NDP candidate Christine Boyle, and the BC Green’s Wendy Hayko.

On October 16th, many of Hamber’s social studies classes hosted a student election in parallel to the provincial one. Six of Hamber’s teachers participated with their classes, with about 330 students voting in the student election. Ms. K. Hewett (Social Studies), one of the teachers responsible for organizing the student election, explained that the election is run for and by students. “We gave students the responsibilities of doing all the different activities,” she stated. “It was like a student-run operation.” The Student Vote at Hamber followed the same process as the official provincial one: there are classrooms with ballot boxes and screens, and students provided their Go Card as identification before they voted. Similar to the provincial election, students can also vouch for each other if they did not bring identification. Afterwards, student volunteers did all the ballot counting, double checking, and tabulation.

Teachers gave students assignments and tasks to educate themselves on the candidates in Hamber’s riding, so that students have an idea on the beliefs and policies of each candidate. In Ms. Hewett’s class, students were  encouraged to look at different areas of policies to figure out what is most important to them. Additionally, they watched segments of the BC Provincial candidate debate on October 8, took notes on what the candidates talked about, and identified any logical fallacies that the candidates used. “I wanted [the students] to see—this is how politicians will frame and talk about what’s important to them or their party,” Ms Hewett explained.

In Ms. R Cooper (Social Studies)’s class, students did assignments researching the campaigns and platforms of each political party.. Additionally, they analyzed articles about the candidate debate to get a better sense of who the candidates are. “I think it was a good pre-education about what the election process would be like,” Stephanie Lee (9) shared. Lee participated in the student vote and helped manage the flow of people entering and exiting the election space. “I think it was just a really nice practice of what voting might look like in the future.”

The Student Vote program is run by an organization called CIVIX, which was founded in 2003 to combat  low voter turnout in Canada. Their Student Vote program has operated for almost every election in Canada since. Dan Allan, CIVIX Chief Program Officer, explained the goal of CIVIX is to educate Canadian youth about democracy and prepare them for voting in the future as well as engaging in political discussions. He told The Nest that, “if more youth become better citizens, then we are accomplishing our goals.”

Results from the over 1,200 schools in BC that participated in the Student Vote program submit their school results to CIVIX, who tabulates the results to get province-wide results from the schools that participated. Christine Boyle of the BC NDP party won Hamber’s student election with 50 per cent of student votes, while conservative candidate John Coupar received 34 per cent. In the actual provincial election in the Vancouver-Little Mountain district, Christine Boyle was elected with 62 per cent of the votes.

Ms. Hewett expressed hope that the next time there is an election, Hamber  will be able to host a Student Vote for everyone in the school, instead of being restricted to six teachers. “I am hopeful that students will become engaged and interested in their civil rights and responsibilities as citizens,” she remarked on the importance of the student vote. “Now they’ll know how to be involved.”

Following the close election results, premier David Eby promised change in his next term as premier. “It's pretty clear to me that British Columbians sent [us] a strong message that we need to do better,” he said in a statement. “My commitment to British Columbians is that I take those lessons very seriously.” 

The outcomes of the election will likely affect Hamber students and Vancouverites in several ways. In its campaign, the BC NDP announced plans to build 20,000 student spaces, and introduced incentive programs to hire more teachers in areas with high need. The party has also announced a housing plan that would build 300,000 housing units, allocated a $50 million budget for mental health care, and agreed to the removal of the carbon tax if dropped as a federal requirement.