From 3 p.m. PT Sunday, based on preliminary results, just over 37 percent of voters turned out to elect local representatives. It’s a number that’s a few percentage points lower than four years ago, but continues to reflect a trend this applies across Canada. So why don’t people vote in local elections? And how did essentially the same level of political participation result in significantly different town halls on Saturday? “For the more casual voter, who might attend a provincial or certainly a federal election, the municipal level is seen as useful,” said David Black, who teaches political communication at Royal Roads University in Victoria. “It’s that lack of appreciation for the difference a mayor and council can make in your life that I think is a starting point for low participation.” In addition to the lack of understanding about what are municipalities doing?say the experts a huge list of candidates and a universal suffrage system remain barriers to higher turnout across the province. “ABC voters are clearly very excited the results in vancouverStuart Prest, a political scientist at Quest University in Squamish, BC, said of the new center-right party that won all of its seats in Vancouver. “But the rest of the population – and there is a significant part of the population that didn’t vote for the ABC – are left with very little to show for their votes.” Both Black and Perst say there are structural fixes that need to be made to ensure higher voter turnout in the next municipal election. 386,931 eligible voters did not vote for Ken Sim. —@seanorr
Why were so many mayors defeated?
Although many mayors of BC lost their jobs, many councilors kept their jobs — in something known as the “incumbent effect,” where voters tend to put faith in tried and tested incumbents. Although voter turnout remained largely the same across the province this year, the reason incumbent mayors appeared to to be carried away wholesale it’s about how figures are made for specific subjects, according to Black. In Vancouver, Kennedy Stewart became a symbol of the city’s failure to address a perceived increase in crime and homelessness, according to Black. Colin Bashran of Kelowna seemed to fall on the same sword, losing to Tom Dias. WATCHES | Established municipalities are overthrown throughout BC:
New mayors were elected in many BC cities. as voters demand change
Many cities in British Columbia have new mayors after municipal elections that have lost several incumbents, including Vancouver and Surrey, where issues of crime and policing played heavily on the campaign trail. “Mayoral candidates are much more easily identified as being on one side or the other of an issue that becomes a ‘ballot question,’” he said. “Surrey RCMP against a Surrey police force [for instance]. In the South Island, development and the politics of development, this became the ballot issue. “According to the voters of this issue, the incumbent becomes uniquely vulnerable and the outcome of the term is negated.” Perst says the perceived lack of action on these “ballot issues” may have led to the same well-informed, affluent voters who voted the current mayors into power in 2018 to vote against them in 2022. Black identifies one community that saw a “wave election,” where one candidate energized a voting base and increased turnout: Langford, BC, on Vancouver Island, which saw longtime mayor Stew Young decisively defeated by Scott Goodmanson.
What are the solutions to low participation?
Black says municipal governments now have a responsibility to educate voters about their responsibilities and powers and convince them of their importance — even outside the election cycle. Although more municipal voters used advance polls and mail-in opportunities this election, turnout rates remained largely the same. Perst says this shows the limit of “small-scale” fixes to ensure people turn out to vote, and says deeper institutional fixes are needed. “When people see themselves represented in systems, we have good evidence that participation will increase,” he said. Perst says one of those fixes would be to increase the threshold for write-in candidates, thereby reducing the length of ballots. Another solution would be to introduce proportional voting systems such as single transferable votewhich would lead people to identify with the candidates more easily, according to Prest. Perst says voters should resist technological solutions such as online voting – which has been proven to be unreliable and unreliable in the past — and focus on calling for institutional reform. “Politics can’t really be fixed by technology,” he said. “It’s fixed by fixing the institutions … bringing people into the conversation.”
