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By Mel Rothenburger

ARMCHAIR MAYOR

ROTHENBURGER: When it comes to voter turnouts in civic elections, size matters

Oct 15, 2022 | 7:13 AM

BIG DAY TODAY — the day we get to pick our new mayors and councils. When I say ‘we,’ I mean those of us who actually do vote. We are a mere one-third of those who are eligible. The 30 per cent turnout for civic elections is a poser.

It’s way less than half the normal turnout for federal elections, yet municipal councils are closest to home. We’ve been scratching our heads for decades trying to figure it out. We think that if we can find ways to make voting easier, more people will do it.

So we can now vote by mail — and indications are more people are doing it that way this time. But that probably only means that a certain number of people who would have voted anyway are putting their ballots in a mailbox instead of in a ballot box at a polling station.

The same can be said should we get into online voting. And the same thing happens when polling stations are added. We could open polling stations for 24 hours a day for a week and it would change nothing. That’s my own conjecture, of course, but it’s based on some pretty good logic.

It has a lot to do with size. While the average turnout across the province is stuck at that one-third level, a lot of places do much better. Small towns like Ashcroft, Cache Creek, Barriere and Chase routinely get turnouts of 50 per cent and better.

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Those places have comparatively tiny populations. Getting out half the eligible voters in a town of a few hundred people is a much different proposition than it is in a city of close to 100,000.

Tiny Clinton hit the 62 per cent mark in 2018, the last time British Columbians went to the polls for a civic election. Bigger towns, though, are in the same boat as Kamloops. Kelowna gets about the same turnout as Kamloops does. So do Langley, Nanaimo, Abbotsford and North Vancouver. So, there’s a clear divide between small-town B.C. and urban B.C.

It has nothing to do with how easy we make it for people to vote. There are plenty of other excuses. When asked to explain why they didn’t vote, the answers rival the ones we used to offer for not doing our homework in Grade 7.

Too busy is a favourite. Not feeling well is another. Out of town is another. Just plain forgot is always a good answer. Religion and the weather are cited, too. Small-town folks are busy just like everyone else. Sometimes they don’t feel well. Sometimes they’re out of town (though it would seem they’re better at using advance voting opportunities than their city cousins). And sure, they might be forgetful, and they go to church and keep an eye out for rain and snow just as much as they do in Kamloops or Kelowna.

And yet, they’re so much better at getting off their butts and going to the polling stations on election day. Kamloops would kill, metaphorically, for a 50 per cent turnout. In the 2014 civic election, a nonpartisan grass roots group calling itself Vote 50 was determined to cross the 50-per cent threshold.

They did everything they could think of to talk people into voting. They held forums, mixers and other events, ran a great website and issued press releases to encourage people to exercise their franchise. They got all kinds of media attention, too.

And when the polls closed on election day, 33 per cent of eligible Kamloops voters had cast ballots, just like always. The B.C. average was 33.3 per cent that year. The only thing that spikes the turnout in Kamloops even slightly is when the mayor’s chair is open, or occasionally when there’s a big issue.

We shall see if Kamloops sees a bump today. But back to the reasons people don’t vote. Of all the excuses people give, one tops all the rest: “I’m just not interested in politics.”

We could get into a deep discussion about how we take democracy for granted, but going back to the big-small community disparity, does that mean small-town folks are more interested in politics than in bigger cities? I think maybe it does.

Maybe there’s a population threshold at which local government starts to seem more distant, less interesting or important than it was when we knew everybody in town and were on a first-name basis with the candidates.

(We still turn out for provincial and federal elections, but they have “really big issues” and really big personalities to attract us.) At a certain point, we can talk ourselves blue in the face about how we should get out and vote, and try all kinds of creative ways to encourage it, but it won’t change anything.

The only way of growing the turnout is to bring back that sense of importance, but how to do that is a topic for another day.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.