Local voter turnout expected to suffer with looming provincial vote

All eyes over mid-to-late October will be on voter turnout.

Numbers varied wildly in 2022, with around 24.4 per cent of eligible voters casting a ballot in Nanaimo, down substantially from the 40.8 per cent who participated four years prior.

Parksville had a 33.92 per cent voter turnout for their last civic election, down slightly from the 43.31 per cent in 2018.

MacKenzie told NanaimoNewsNOW he suspects a looming provincial election will keep more voters away from the local vote.

He added there is already a misconception suggesting local elections don’t matter.

“There’s a lot of choices that voters have to make in municipal elections, and it’s not always easy to get the information that you need. Voters in Nanaimo have to make decisions about 44 candidates, this is just a lot of work, and many people might decide it’s not worth doing that work or thinking carefully about who they’re going to vote for, and that might be enough to turn them off.”

Voters will also be asked to weigh in on School Board trustees, with others voting in Regional District elections.

As competing campaigns at different levels of politics evolve in the coming weeks, the noise, too, will intensify, MacKenzie added.

While committed voters and those engaged in politics will vote in both elections, those who want to get involved but don’t pay close enough attention could get lost and confused.

“Those people might just get confused about which election is happening when or which one of these people who have an election sign along the road is running for which election. You will have people who are unsure about how the process is working or who’s on the ballot, and this just makes that situation, which happens in every election, much more difficult.”

A new wrinkle for Nanaimo this local election cycle is the presence of an electoral organization, or slate.

The group of one Mayoral and seven Council candidates are running under the REAL Nanaimo banner, which MacKenzie said mirrors strategy more commonly seen at the provincial or federal levels.

He said locally, the presence of a collective group carries both positives and negatives.

“Slates can help people make sense of that (crowded candidate) landscape and make an informed choice. At the same time, there’s a real risk with slates in the municipal election because…if a slate is reasonably popular, and people vote for everybody on that slate…then it is entirely possible that you could elect a Council with either no opposition or very little opposition.”

He said a key aspect of Canadian democracy is to ensure the government has an opposition to keep them accountable.

General voting day for the municipal election is Oct. 17, with advance voting opportunities on Oct. 7 and Oct. 14.

NanaimoNewsNOW’s election page gives a complete breakdown of all the candidates running through the mid-Island.

Beginning Thursday, Oct. 1, readers can use our Know Your Vote tool to find how their opinions and viewpoints on City issues mirror those of candidates running in the local election.

Election day for the provincial vote is Oct. 24, with advance voting available between Oct. 16-21.

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by Alex Rawnsley

Local voter turnout expected to suffer with looming provincial vote

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