Advance Voter Turnout High for BC, New Brunswick Elections

The number of voters who have cast ballots in the provincial elections in British Columbia and New Brunswick is higher than usual, according to election officials.

New Brunswick has seen 138,000 ballots cast, representing 24.1 percent voter turnout, Elections New Brunswick said in an email to The Epoch Times.

In B.C., 778,424 voters had cast a ballot by end of day on Oct. 15, representing nearly 22 percent, Elections BC told The Epoch Times in an email.

British Columbia's 2020 election occurred in the middle of the pandemic, with an "unprecedented" number of voters, 31.4 percent, casting a ballot by mail, according to Elections BC. A record 35.4 percent of voters cast their ballot in advance voting, compared with only 28.8 percent on election day.

The proportion of voters who cast their ballot at advance voting has steadily increased over the past several elections, the report said, from 6.9 percent of voters in the 2001 provincial election to 35.4 percent in 2020. Advance voting was held between Oct. 15 and 21, 2020, and saw 671,231 votes cast.

Almost 35 percent of voters that year (131,603 out of 376,903) used advance polling stations, which were open on Sept. 5 and Sept. 8, while 47 percent of those who voted cast ballots on election day, the report said.

It was the largest number of ballots cast in advance in a provincial election since records dating back to 1967.

In total, more than 65 percent of registered voters turned out for the 2020 election, casting 376,903 votes.