Victoria, B.C. – The nail biting continues for B.C.’s political parties.

Final count for the provincial election – the closest in decades – started yesterday with all 87 districts starting to count either their absentee ballots or conduct a district electoral officer recount in the case of the Courtenay-Comox and Vancouver-False Creek electoral districts.

“Those recounts were completed yesterday afternoon,” says Andrew Watson, communications manager with Elections BC. “So, those districts have started to count their absentee ballots as well and as of 10 a.m. this morning, 28 districts across the province have reported that they’ve completed final count in their district.”

So far none of those final counts have altered the election results reported on General Voting Day when the BC Liberals won 43 seats, the NDP 41 and the BC Greens 3.

However, the race in Courtenay-Comox remains very tight.

“They’ve started to count their absentee ballots and the last I checked there was a 12-vote difference between the top two candidates in that district (with the NDP still in the lead). That’s up from nine on election night.”

(In Vancouver-False Creek he says the Liberal candidate has extended his lead from 560 votes to 569).

Under the Election Act, her says final counts must be complete by tomorrow.

“And we’ve got three more updates to the website scheduled for today – noon, 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. and we’ll likely see a number of those districts complete at each of those intervals.”

Watson says judicial recounts can also be requested up to six days after the final counts are complete.

He says a district electoral officer must request a judicial recount if there’s a tie or if the difference between the top two candidates is less than 1/500^th of the total ballots considered in the election.