One thing six North Okanagan municipalities can work on together for the next four years is how to increase voter turnout for the municipal elections.
Numbers released by civicinfo.bc.ca after Saturday’s vote are abysmal for this region.
Voter turnout from four years decreased in Armstrong, Enderby, Spallumcheen and Coldstream, went up slightly in Vernon, and Lumby actually had an election this year, whereas, in 2014, mayor and council were acclaimed.
Armstrong had the biggest drop, going from 30 per cent voter turnout in 2014 to 22 per cent on Saturday, 864 votes cast out of 3,854 eligible voters. And, like 2014, Armstrong was voting only on councillors and school trustees — Mayor Chris Pieper was acclaimed.
Spallumcheen dropped to 25 per cent from 29 per cent; Coldstream went from 32.5 per cent four years ago to 32 per cent.
Enderby, which had the largest turnout four years ago at 39 per cent, had 35 per cent voter turnout Saturday.
In Lumby, 32 per cent of the village cast votes for council and school trustees.
The only rise was in Vernon, and it’s not much of an increase, going to 32 per cent from 30 per cent in 2014. In Vernon, 9,755 votes were cast with 30,602 eligible voters.
Brutal.
There were advance polls in all communities. The weather was gorgeous Saturday. Voting took, at most, maybe 10-15 minutes Saturday, depending on what polling station you were at. The elections were a month earlier than usual.
So how could the turnout be so pathetic?
This is the only chance you have to determine who represents you at the municipal level. The group responsible for infrastructure, taxes, education. This is what was fought for in the World Wars – democracy and freedom to make these decisions, not have them made for us.
The people who put their name forwards deserve better. Think about it over the next term.