PG’s low voter turnout “not a lack of opportunity,” says Chief Election Officer

This article has been edited  

Less than a quarter of the city cast a ballot in the 2018 Municipal Election, a 13% decrease from the last one in 2014.

Walter Babicz, Chief Election Officer for the City of Prince George, says while 2014 was a “high water mark” in voter turnout at 37%, this year was still lower than PG’s average.

The 2011 election saw approximately 29% of the eligible population vote, and in 2008 the city beat the provincial average at 32.5%.

Babicz didn’t want to speculate on trends or reasons why voter turnout was lower than previous years, but had some thoughts on what it was not.  

“It’s not due to lack of opportunity for voters. We’ve been doing a lot of work to increase voter opportunities and locations.”

The city added a new voting location, an additional advance voting location and one more special voting opportunity this time around. On the big day, residents had nine schools to choose from, and leading up to it, had four locations to cast an advance vote.

“We used social media, we had magnetic signs out in the community and we increased promotions of the election,” said Babicz.  

“My view is that there was not more opportunity in previous elections.”

 “We were certainly hoping for a better turnout than we had. We were hoping to at least hitting the average we had for other elections. Hopefully that will improve in the future.”