Light turnout expected for municipal byelection
When is 20 per cent considered a passing grade? When you’re talking about a municipal byelection.
Vancouverites — at least some of them — will go to the polls this month in the city’s first byelection in a generation, to elect a city councillor and nine school board trustees.
Municipal elections typically see lower turnouts than either federal or provincial elections, and byelections are generally even lower. That’s unfortunate, said Janice MacKenzie, Vancouver’s chief election officer and city clerk, adding: “I don’t think a lot of people realize just how important it is, and how directly local government impacts their day-to-day lives.”
Vancouver doesn’t have to look far for a recent example of a low byelection turnout: over the weekend, the City of Kamloops elected a new mayor and two councillors in a byelection that saw fewer than one-quarter of registered voters cast ballots.
Kamloops’ new mayor-elect, former councillor Ken Christian, said Monday that he and his team had a “reality check” at the outset of the campaign, setting a target of 10,000 votes and predicting a voter turnout around 20 per cent.
Voter turnout ended up being 21 per cent and Christian received 9,274 votes. The turnout, though in line with what Christian expected before the byelection, still represented a “significant” drop from the 33 per cent turnout for Kamloops’ 2014 general municipal election, Christian said, “and that is still nowhere near enough.”
But even Kamloops’ 21 per cent turnout would be considered “fabulous” if Vancouver can match it this month, said MacKenzie.
“But I just don’t know what to expect . ... It just doesn’t have the same sort of pizzazz that a regular general local election has.”
MacKenzie’s office has been trying to spread awareness about the Oct. 14 byelection, she said.
“But given that we’re going into a (general municipal) election next year, we have to be mindful of the cost associated with trying to get those people out . ... You don’t want to go crazy with the money, the real show is next year.”
Elections, after all, come with a significant cost.
The overall budget for Vancouver’s 2017 byelection is set at around $1.5 million, MacKenzie said Monday, and it’s currently expected to come in on budget.
The city has bought advertising in some weekly newspapers and on social media, she said, but hasn’t run any ads on the radio, TV or in the city’s daily newspapers.
Vancouver’s last municipal general election, in 2014, saw a 43 per cent turnout, which represented a 30 per cent increase over 2011.
Vancouver’s last municipal byelection, in 1992, was prompted by the resignation of COPE Coun. Bruce Yorke due to poor health and saw one of the city’s smallest turnouts in decades, The Vancouver Sun’s Jeff Lee reported in September 1992.
Just over 10 per cent of Vancouver’s 269,580 registered voters cast ballots in the 1992 byelection, which was won by Lynne Kennedy of the Non-Partisan Association, who told The Sun that the byelection campaign was difficult “because nobody was paying attention out there.”
A Postmedia News reporter approached five separate Vancouverites Monday afternoon to ask if they planned to vote in the byelection, and only one was aware of it.
Chris Biggar, a 41-year-old Vancouver visual designer who voted in recent general elections at the municipal, provincial and federal level, said Monday that he hadn’t heard any of his colleagues or friends talk about this month’s byelection, adding, “I didn’t even know it was happening.”
Last week, the City of Vancouver sent out Municipal Byelection Voter Guides to households, which included information on how to vote, a map showing all 50 voting locations across the city, and messages in English, French, Chinese, Vietnamese, Spanish and Punjabi.
People can also vote at City Hall on either of two advance voting days: Wednesday or Oct. 10.