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As voter participation rates have dipped year after year, it has become common to see commentators and community leaders bemoaning how most young people don’t vote and are totally disengaged from politics. This state of affairs is repeatedly portrayed as a harbinger of imminent doom.
So what happens in Kelowna when a hard working young adult successfully wins a municipal by-election with help from other smart politically interested young adult friends? Some old curmudgeons start going on about young people stealing the by-election with their new fangled Facebook and Twitter.
Oh mercy.
Implicit in this line of silly reasoning is the idea that the kind of people who routinely win elections and occupy the highest offices in the land are our rightful rulers, so surely anyone displacing them must be doing something devious.
But to say the by-election was stolen when the winner won with support from only three percent of eligible voters, is absurd. To stop him, all one of the other candidates had to do was inspire or motivate 2,864 voters to go to the polls. They didn’t, so his 2,863 votes stood as the winning ticket. That’s kind of how elections work.
The issue that is worrisome really, is how disengaged the vast majority of residents are from local government.
The problem at city hall is not that some special interest group or other has infiltrated the place and are blocking others from access to power. The problem is that the vast majority of citizens aren’t interested enough to make sure one of the people elected to council represents their interests.
To win a council seat, less than 2,900 people have to rally around a candidate and what they stand for. To put it in perspective, close to twice as many eligible voters take in every single one of the Kelowna Rockets’ 36 home games a year plus playoffs. And they pay big bucks to do it too. Voting on the other hand, is free.
So what is going on?
The weird thing from my perspective, is that municipal government is the most accessible level of government, yet fewer people vote in municipal elections than provincial or federal ones. Those lately have been getting close to 60 per cent turnout. Kelowna’s regular municipal election last November however, had a dismal 19.6 per cent turnout which dived to 11 per cent for the by-election. Makes you wonder how low it could have gone had Kevin Craig not made his big push.
In federal and provincial elections, voting is simple. The list of candidates is short and because everyone belongs to a party, figuring out what each candidate stands for is easy, they are going to vote the way their party tells them (most of the time anyway. Kelowna’s Norm Letnick recently stood up and voted against his own government but he’s quite the exception and I doubt he will be making a habit of it.)
A municipal election is messy by comparison. The candidate lists are long (36 candidates last November for eight spots, 15 candidates for one spot in the by-election) and everyone is an independent, so figuring out what their values are takes some work. Most people appear unwilling to do it.
But once an MP or an MLA is elected, we don’t really have much influence over them. City councillors on the other hand are far more accessible and council holds public hearings when it makes important decisions like re-zonings. And city governments deal with very tangible things in our lives, like garbage collection, snow removal and deciding whether our neighbour is allowed a secondary suite.
So as we look for ways to get voter turnout up for our city elections, I hope we don’t glom onto simple solutions like instituting a party system to make things simpler for people to understand.
What we need to figure out is not how to make local government simpler, but how to get people to see that it’s worth the effort to deal with its complexities.
adrian@kelowna.com
250-575-3517
4 Responses to “Adrian Nieoczym: Low voter turnout a symptom of messy electoral system”
Tags: City Hall, Kelowna, voter turnout
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A good part of the reason for voter apathy in Kelowna is because that is the way our city council wants it. They want it because most of them are on council with the backing of developers and the business community and the last thing that the latter group wants is an awakened community that might upset the status quo. Kelowna council had an opportunity to get more people involved by putting at least one referendum question on the ballot but decided not to because that might force the hand of the majority on council to do something other than what the business community wants. The most outspoken people on council against the use of referendums have been Andre Blanleil, Graeme James and Robert Hobson. You can put a lot of the blame on them for the 11% voter turnout in the by-election.
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Good article Adrian. Kelowna voter participation is not atypical.
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I’ve always been told major events come in three’s. Well, it’s happened to me again.
I am enjoying my deep brain implants, I have just survived a heart attack and stent implant (including an air ambulance ride to Victoria), and the biggest fortuitous happening of all… I agree with most of Adrian’s article.
He has given some thought to this sad affair and he is right. Residence of kelowna have no room to complain
when a young man uses his skills and effort to get elected.
For those who don’t like the result and what to assign some sort of blame; get off your butts and participate in democracy next time.
One small thing Adrian. Your comments regarding Norm Letnick are a bit premature. The man has great personal integrity…just watch!
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Glad to hear we can agree about some things Mel! But please don’t take my comment about Norm Letnick negatively. I pointed out what he did not to belittle it but to show how extraordinary it is for an MLA to vote against their party. It was a move I really respect. Even Norm, in the interview I did with him about his vote, said it wasn’t something he wanted to do too often.
Please continue discussion on the forum: link