While the majority of the 1.6 million voters in B.C. voted to extinguish the harmonized sales tax (HST), the majority of Nechako Lakes electoral area voters chose to continue paying the tax.
According to a report on the 2011 HST referendum by the chief electoral officer for Elections B.C., 4,141 Nechako Lakes voters were not in favor of reinstating the provincial sales tax (PST) and goods and services tax (GST), in place of the HST, while 3,626 locals voted for a return of the PST and GST.
A total of 7,782 registered voters in the Nechako Lakes electoral district voted, which equates to a 48.13 per cent voter turn out.
The report also describes the proceedings, results and costs of administering the referendum.
According to Elections B.C. the 2011 HST referendum was the first referendum conducted entirely by mail since a 2002 treaty negotiations referendum.
More than three million voting packages were issued to voters throughout the province, of those more than 1.6 million ballot packages were returned to Elections B.C.
The report showed that more than 38,000 ballot packages received by the deadline were not considered for counting because they did not meet the requirements of the HST referendum regulations.
More than 20,000 ballots were rejected due to an unsigned certification envelope and or not providing a date of birth, 1,545 ballots were rejected because the certification envelope was not used by the individual to whom it was issued, more than 16,000 ballots were rejected because the voters birth date they provided did not match A total of 8,472 ballot packages were also not counted due to being received after the close of voting.
Elections B.C. incurred costs of $8,067,395 to administer the 2011 HST referendum.