Finishing third in Oak Bay-Gordon Head behind the NDP and Conservatives was disappointing but not unexpected for Greens candidate Lisa Gunderson.

What was strange was that fans were congratulating her for days afterwards on her second place finish.

“It’s more of a situation of how many times do I have to explain this to people,” said Gunderson, a psychologist and deputy leader of the BC Greens.

Supporters and friends texted her, called her and stopped her on the street to congratulate her on defeating the Conservative candidate. She didn’t.

The final vote count on Monday showed NDP candidate Diana Gibson had a decisive victory in the riding with 14,519 votes. BC Conservative candidate Stephen Andrew was second with 8,542 votes and Gunderson third with 6,508.

However, on election night, with 27 of 29 polls reported, the Elections BC website erroneously showed Gunderson with 8,035 votes – well behind Gibson, who had 13,154 at the time, but ahead of Andrew with 7,766.

It was televised live and Gunderson was interviewed about her performance based on that result.

For supporters who didn’t see the final tally or weren’t constantly checking the Elections BC website, Gunderson appeared to be in second place for a while.

While election night results come in poll after poll, and candidates can advance or stay at different times throughout the night, candidates’ vote counts usually don’t go backwards.

Gunderson’s campaign team requested a recount, but the request was denied by Elections BC, which said there was no evidence that votes were not properly accepted or ballots were not properly rejected, that votes were not recorded with accuracy or that the vote counting equipment did not process the ballots accurately.

Elections BC spokesperson Andrew Watson said Times Colonist in an email about the discrepancy in preliminary results from Oak Bay-Gordon Head “was due to a data entry error by office staff who entered the results as they were reported over the phone.”

When the tabulator result strips were returned to the county elections office later on election night, “they were checked against the preliminary results reported in our system, which identified the error and a correction was made,” Watson said.

Watson said it’s a standard part of Elections BC’s “quality assurance process” to resolve these types of errors.

“A data entry error of this nature is not grounds for a recount under the Electoral Act,” he said.

Gunderson said he had no illusions that a recount would change the results, but supported the campaign’s request for recounts to better explain what happened and prevent it from happening again.

She said she accepts there was a data entry error, saying Elections BC apologized, explained it was human error and documented it.

BC political leaders, including Premier David Eby, Conservative Leader John Rustad and Green Leader Sonia Furstenau, as well as campaign managers and controllers, publicly applauded Elections BC’s independent office for the way it handled the voting, counting and recount processes.

Automatic judicial recounts will take place for the Kelowna Center and Surrey-Guildford districts because the difference in counts between the top two candidates is less than 1/500 of the total ballots counted.

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