Early BC Voters Came Out in Droves

Over 600,000 people have already cast their ballots

The BC provincial election is this Saturday, but a lot of people have taken advantage of advance voting from October 10-13, and then October 15-16. Apparently over 600,000 people have already voted today, which is considered a very good turnout.

Today was the last day of advance voting and so we went to cast our ballots at the Dunbar Community Centre after lunch.

A long line ahead of us this afternoon

We were shocked to see a long line that had formed in the long corridor, but the line was moving, ever so slowly.

A few minutes later we got to the point in the line where the poster read that we were 20 minutes away from voting, and then another one saying 10 minutes to go. Luckily for the elderly there were folded chairs available to sit on if they couldn't stand too long. We even bumped into some friends in the line ahead of us.

Finally we made it to the front, where we could see the hold up -- only three volunteers were registering voters, while a few others were milling around. 

Our photo identification was matched with the voter card and then we were formally told a ballot was being prepared for us. We were instructed to take a Sharpie pen and either fill the circle or draw an "X" and not to vote for more than one candidate. Then we were told to put the ballot in a black folder and take it to the person who would insert it into the ballot counting machine.

Personally I was surprised to see two pairs of voting booths were next to each other and not separated! In any event I brought my ballot to the guy who slipped my piece of paper into the machine that looked like a printer and a few seconds later my vote was counted, #5842. So up until the point when I voted there were 5,842 of us who had voted in the advance polls in this polling station since October 10.

Cute signs hinting the length of time

Coming out of the voting area there was still a very long line of people waiting to vote, and the queue snaked all the way down the corridor to the entrance of the community centre!

I heard yesterday there was no line at all! Perhaps voters woke up today, worried about long lines on Saturday and wanted to cast their ballots earlier; it's going to be a nail-biter of an election which is heartening to see so many people coming out already!