Former Osoyoos mayor and BC Liberal Party candidate John Slater surpassed Lakhvinder Jhaj of the NDP by more than 800 votes during the May 12 provincial election to become the first MLA to represent the new Boundary-Similkameen riding.
Slater had captured 37.58 per cent of the 17,133 votes cast in the electoral district, of which Osoyoos is a part of, while the NDP captured 32.84 per cent.
Conservative Party candidate Joe Cardoso came in third with 3,456 votes or just more than 20 per cent of all votes in the riding, while Green Party candidate Bob Grieve received 1,612 votes.
Premier Gordon Campbell and the Liberals succeeded in securing an historic third term as B.C.’s governing party, securing 46.08 per cent of votes in the province.
As of May 14, 1,549,165 valid votes had been tallied in the province’s 85 ridings and 49 Liberals and 36 NDP candidates had been elected.
However, there will likely be a recount in the Delta South riding where Liberal incumbent Wally Oppal, B.C.’s attorney general, was only ahead of Independent candidate Vicki Huntington by two votes.
When the legislature was dissolved on April 14, the Liberals had 45 seats and the NDP had 34 out of a previous total of 79 seats.
Six new seats in the legislature, including one for the Boundary-Similkameen electoral district which stretches from Hedley in the west to Christina Lake in the east and to Kaleden in the north, were added across the province for this election.
As for the referendum question on electoral reform, 921,797 votes were cast in favour of keeping the current “first-past-the-post” system while 583,080 votes were cast in favour of the single-transferable vote (STV) option.
In order for the STV concept to have been selected as the preferred electoral system for the province, 60 per cent of all voters must have voted in favour of the system and more than 50 per cent of votes in at least 51 of the province’s 85 ridings must have been cast in favour of the system.
According to premilinary results last updated on May 14, with 10,812 of 10,824 polls reporting, only 38.75 per cent of the 1,504,877 referendum votes tallied were in favour of the STV.
In this riding, 10,583 people or more than 63 per cent of voters had voted to maintain the current electoral system while 5,980 people, or 36.1 per cent of voters, chose the STV option.
If the STV concept had been favoured by voters, there would have been fewer ridings in B.C. in the next election but the same number of MLAs in the legislature.
Instead of voting for only one candidate, voters would have ranked candidates in order of preference.
Elections results will not be finalized until May 27.