EAGER FOR AN EDGE IN TIGHT RACE, PARTIES PUSH FOR ADVANCE VOTES
If you’ve ever typed in your email address on a political party website, talked to a candidate on the phone or mumbled to a canvasser on your doorstep that you might be willing to at least consider supporting their party, then brace yourself: For the next few days, you are one of the most politically important people in British Columbia.
Behind the scenes, B.C.’s election has shifted into the getout-the-vote phase. That means the top priority in the war rooms of the B.C. Liberals, NDP and Greens is to find anyone who might possibly be a party supporter and do everything humanly possible to get them to
an advance polling station and lock down their vote.
Need directions to your nearest polling station? Not a problem. Want a ride? Hop in. Aren’t sure you can fit voting into your schedule? No worries — someone will come back and remind you in person tomorrow.
There’s an extraordinary amount of effort being put into advance voting in this election. Small armies of volunteers in each riding work the phones and knock on doors, dedicated entirely to making sure you got out either to cast your ballot this past weekend, or intend to do so in the remaining advance polling that runs Wednesday through Saturday.
For most voters, advance voting is about convenience. You can avoid the long lines on May 9 by picking an early day instead.
Elections in other provinces and countries have shown it’s growing in popularity. In B.C., advance voting jumped from 5.74 per cent of total voters in 1996 to 17.57 per cent in 2009 and 20.34 per cent in 2013. In response, B.C. added two extra days this time, and boosted the number of advance voting places from 264 to 348.
But for the parties, it’s something entirely different.
The goal, parties say, is to get the for-sure supporters out early, lock down that vote and refocus volunteers on what can really swing the race: undecided and new voters. That can make all the difference in a riding like Saanich North and the Islands, a threeway race decided by fewer than 400 votes in 2013, or CoquitlamMaillardville, where the NDP’s Selina Robinson won by 41 votes last time.
“Get out and vote in the advance polls,” Liberal Leader Christy Clark said in Surrey on the weekend. “Do it today. Get it out of the way.”
“If everybody in this room could commit to finding five people that make sure go out and vote in advance polls before voting day, what a difference you are going to make,” she added.
“Early voting is really important,” NDP Leader John Horgan said in his home Vancouver Island riding Saturday, where he voted. “We don’t want to have something come up on election day and not get the chance to vote.”
There are other political considerations as well.
For the NDP, the goal is to increase B.C.’s voter participation rate from the dismal 50 per cent turnout in 2013, because lower voter turnout generally helps the incumbent Liberals. So the more publicity over early voting and the more social media activity where people see their friends vote, the more likely it is others might do it too.
And buried within that is the hope that easier, more frequent advance voting will somehow attract the most elusive of all voter types — youth.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won the 2015 federal election in part because of high voter turnout, and a more than 20 per cent increase in the number of people aged 18 to 34. Elections Canada credited more advance polling stations set up at post-secondary campuses and community centres. Federally, the youth voter turnout rate exceeded 50 per cent.
But in B.C., it remains depressingly low. Only 40 per cent of eligible voters aged 25-34 cast ballots in 2013, compared to 74 per cent of voters aged 65-74. The NDP are trying to entice young people to the ballot box with promises to eliminate interest rates on student loans and provide grants to graduates. But the party debated internally, and then declined to go so far as to offer partly free college and university tuition, so it’s unclear if New Democrats have enough bait on the line to reel in young voters.
Elections B.C., meanwhile, said it has ramped up its use of technology to make voting easier. You don’t even have to go to an advance polling station in your riding. For the first time provincewide, officials will be able to look a voter up on a laptop and print off their absentee voting card with candidate names right on site.
B.C.’s official election day remains May 9. But when the votes are tallied that night, the victorious party will no doubt credit part of its success to the ground game that started this weekend, and getting as many voters as possible out to the advance polls.
As of Sunday afternoon, 118,270 of the province’s 3,156,991 registered voters voted at an advance polling location.