Several federal ridings may not have an elected member of Parliament until Thursday or even Friday, as Elections Canada begins the arduous task of verifying and counting more than one million mail-in ballots.
There are 24 close races where mail-in ballots will likely decide the winner.
In Nanaimo-Ladysmith, for example, there are fewer than a thousand votes between the leading NDP candidate Lisa Marie Barron and Conservative candidate Tamara Kronis — with 7,872 mail-in votes still to be counted.
Elections Canada staff across the country will spend the day verifying the ballots to make sure people who mailed in their vote did not also vote in person.
In ridings where lots of votes were received by mail, staff may not be able to start actually counting them until tomorrow and may have to continue for several days.
Elections Canada received a record number of mail-in ballots this year: nearly one million from within Canada and another 26,266 received from people living outside of the country.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is returning to Ottawa without the majority government mandate Liberals had hoped for when he called the early election last month.
While the final results in some ridings might not be known for days, the Liberals led in 158 ridings early Tuesday and were in a position to form the next government. The party held 155 seats when Trudeau called the election in August.
CHEK News
