Around 1,000 mail-in ballots were sent to voters, but only around 600 were returned including some that arrived too late to be counted.

(LEVI LANDRY / iNFOnews.ca)

Around 1,000 voters requested mail-in ballots in the Kamloops election, but slow-moving delivery left some uncounted.

It's unclear just how many won't be counted in the official election results, but the City's chief election officer called it "regrettable," especially with the low voter turnout this year.

"Yesterday and today we got around 50 or so each day, so far, of late returns," chief election officer Amanda Passmore said at an Oct. 18 council meeting. "I don't want to miss out on any single vote because they all matter."

She lamented the late ballots in response to a question from councillor Kathy Sinclair.

"With mail being sorted in Vancouver and the time lags, did we miss some votes because of the process?" Sinclair asked.

Passmore explained the City got about 600 mail-in ballots out of the 1,000 that were requested.

She added that she would have preferred to start sending them to voters earlier, but her office didn't receive the ballots until about 2 p.m., Sept. 29.

Those ballots had 38 candidates for mayor, council and school board.

She cut off requests at midnight on Oct. 2 and had them mailed to voters the next morning and wouldn't send anymore.

"By the time it got to their residence, there would be no time for them to turn it back to us," she said.

Although she said about 600 ballots were received, it's unclear whether the late returns on Oct. 17 and 18 are included in that figure.

It's also unclear whether the late ballots would have affected the election results, but it's unlikely since the runner-up council and trustee candidates were hundreds of votes behind the winners.

Any late ballots are locked away until all paper records are eventually destroyed, she said.

In the case of the mayor-elect Reid Hamer-Jackson, he was ahead of the runner-up Dieter Dudy by more than 1,000 votes.

The official tally is expected to be published by the City today, Oct. 19.

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