VancouverMETRO VANCOUVER NEWS
Surrey election day: What voters need to know about voting, 97 candidates and results
Surrey’s municipal election reaches its final voting day Saturday, Oct. 17. Polls are open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at 52 locations, where voters will choose a mayor, eight councillors and six school trustees. Results are expected online soon after voting closes.
A busy and sometimes confusing civic election campaign comes to an end with final voting Saturday, Oct. 17. Polls are open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at 52 locations across Surrey.
Nearly 100 candidates are on the Surrey ballot for mayor, city council and school board, amid a snap B.C. election involving 47 MLA candidates across 10 ridings in Surrey. There are seven mayoral candidates, 66 candidates for council and 24 for school trustee, for a record total of 97. Municipal elections are held every four years in B.C.
Voters will choose a mayor, eight city councillors and six school trustees. People on Elections BC’s voter list should have received a voter card by mail. Bring it to the polls along with one or two pieces of ID. Curbside and mail-in voting are also options.
Voting locations, wait times, requirements and election results are available at surrey.ca/election. Surrey Now-Leader will provide election coverage and post-election reaction at surreynowleader.com. Results are expected to appear online soon after polls close.
Surrey Chief Election Officer Gib van Ert said voting machines make the process considerably faster. Voting does not end at 8 p.m. if people are still queuing: everyone in line will be allowed in and given a chance to vote. That means voting may finish later, depending on how busy each location is. Once a poll closes and tabulation begins, results can come in quickly. Preliminary results began arriving around 9:30 p.m. in the last election, followed shortly by results from the remaining voting locations. All results are posted on the city’s website.
Related coverage includes a report that 52,605 ballots were cast in advance voting, up 47 per cent from 2022; candidate profiles for mayor, council and school board; coverage of two candidate forums; and a Q&A with van Ert about additional advance voting sites and the roughly 100 names on the ballot.
The mayoral candidates are Igal Ammons-II of New Surrey+, Linda Annis of Surrey First, Brenda Locke of Surrey Connect, Doug McCallum of the Safe Surrey Coalition, Honveer Singh Randhawa of the Conservative Party of Surrey, Mike Starchuk of Imagine Surrey and Troy Van Vliet of Surrey NOW.
Council candidates, grouped as listed: Surrey First — Debra Antifaev, Mike Bose, Janet Brown, Bilal Cheema, Jasroop Gosal, Gagan Nahal, Clint Stewart and Shina Vermani; Surrey Connect — Harry Bains, Michael Dunn, Gordon Hepner, Pardeep Kooner, Vera LeFranc, Rob Stutt, Rona Tepper and Noemi Victorino; Safe Surrey Coalition — Cheney Cloke, Doug Elford, Meera Gill, Suhana Gill, Laurie Guerra, Mandeep Singh Nagra, Allison Patton and Beau Simpson; Conservative Electors Association, Surrey — Ricky Bajwa, Dan B. Carlos, Mehnaz Javed, Cordel Pullar, Harkirat Singh Sidhu, Manu Sharma, Calvin Vanderploeg and Donna Wu; Imagine Surrey — Yousef Aldabainah, Chandan Chahal, Perminder Chohan, Narima Dela Cruz, Ashiyana Hanif, William Li, Margaret Mubanda and Kevin Wilkie; Surrey NOW — Gail Beszedes, Ollivor Dickson, Jesse Johl, Rahul Gill, Enrique Ponce De Leon and Dr. Werner Spangehl; New Surrey+ — Leanna Chatwin, Messia Ditshimba, Chris Hoffman, Ian de Hoog, Emily Kennedy, Matthew Smed, Lily Tsi and Grace Ziegler; and independents — Intikhab Ahmed, Lisa Dawn Alexis, Philip Carless, Isaac Daniel, Youssef Khattab, Jimmy Rico, Tom Said, Miguel Ting, Vik Uppal, Mila Wong-Kabush and Salman Zafar. James Yu did not submit a questionnaire.
In an editor’s note, the publication said it sent its council questionnaire to New Surrey+ slate candidates through mayoral candidate Igal Ammons II. He replied: “Our council speaks with one voice. What one tells you is the same the other will say in his or her own words.” No biographies were provided. The slate returned a link to its group answers.
School trustee candidates, grouped as listed: Surrey First Education — Terry Allen, Bob Holmes, Laurie Larsen, Garry Thind, Gary Tymoschuk and Shawn Wilson; Surrey NOW — John Banovich, Dr. Michelle Ceniza, Rohit D’Silva, Vanessa Gilera, Dr. Vincent Tighe and Venson Wang; Our Surrey — Kyle Jones, Vick Karan, Dean McGee and Anne Whitmore; and independents — Harjit Bhullar, Amrit Birring, Gurleen K Chahal, Noor Cheema, Gary B. Hee, Meena Kochher, Ghulam Mujtaba and Afzalur Rahman. The source notes that Thind is now running as the B.C. Conservative candidate in Guildford. Shawn Wilson, Vincent Tighe, Harjit Bhullar and Gurleen K Chahal did not submit questionnaires.