Collective action needed to improve pathetic voter turnout
CRD should lead a broad community dialogue
Collective action will be essential to bolster voter turnout in future civic municipal elections, according to the civic watchdog Grumpy Taxpayer$ of Greater Victoria.
Across most of Greater Victoria during this year’s municipal elections, far fewer residents exercised their democratic right with only View Royal, Langford, and Metchosin seeing an increase in the number of eligible voters casting a ballot compared to 2018. And alarmingly, the turnout across the province dropped from about 42 in 2018 to 37 percent in 2022.
“Frankly we can’t understand why someone would not vote,” says John Treleaven, chair of Grumpy Taxpayer$. “There must be a community wide effort to send the message that ‘this is your future folks and its critical you show up at the polls.'”
Dialogue should include service clubs, businesses, charities, chambers, universities – the entire community, Treleaven says. Perhaps the CRD is the ideal body to lead a broad community dialogue, he adds.
“There must also be collective action by authorities to work towards improving voter turnout. That includes the CRD, 13 local municipalities, the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM), and particularly Elections BC.”
Various reasons have been put forward locally by pundits and the public to explain the low voter turnout.
There were complaints about long lineups, too few polling stations, and polling stations located in poor locations. It was felt that many people are very preoccupied with housing, jobs, family obligations, and the other life challenges these days. Municipalities need to do much better next time.
It was also felt that some municipalities do relatively little to encourage involvement in their municipality.
Elections BC will analyze how the election went and make recommendations in its report to the provincial legislature. We look forward to the report and the improvements it should provoke..
READ MORE
Voter turnout in this year’s B.C. local elections remained low. So how did so much change?CBC News, Oct. 18, 2022.
Every one must now vote, Grumpy Taxpayers, Oct. 2022.
The lack of community based advance polling stations may affect voter turnout
There seemed to be no shortage of voters at the cook street activity centre.
We delayed our voting till later in the afternoon, because of the huge turn out of voters. Even though it took almost an hr and a half to vote.
So we saw no sign of apathy.
However, if you reconfigure a city to be basically made up of voters, why would they?
We need to encourage rent to own properties, that would be so empowering !
Thanks,
Sabine Orlik