While there were a lot of positive takeaways from this year’s municipal election, I still found myself spiralling on Tuesday morning (Oct. 27) after confirming voter turnout in Haliburton County.
It’s not pretty, folks. Averaged out across the four townships, a little over a third of eligible voters bothered to cast a ballot, at 34.8 per cent. Now, that is up from the lousy 26 per cent turnout we saw in 2022, but I expected much better.
For one, people had choices this time around, with 58 confirmed candidates Countywide. That was up from 41, but felt more significant because it led to fewer acclamations – which is when a seat is automatically won because only one person ran for it.
In 2022, we had 12 of 24 council positions filled via acclamation – including the mayors and deputy mayors in both Dysart et al and Minden Hills. From that perspective, I can understand why turnout was so low. For most, the direction of their councils and, subsequently, the next four years were largely set in stone.
This time, the only acclamation was Ward 1 in Algonquin Highlands. But it didn’t seem to make much of a difference.
Dysart et al reported the highest turnout at 39.46 per cent, with 5,300 of 13,433 eligible voters casting a ballot. That was a jump of about eight per cent, according to statistics from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO). One interesting caveat, however, is that AMO only identified 9,588 eligible voters in Dysart four years ago. Has the population really grown that much?
There were some inconsistent numbers elsewhere, too.
Minden Hills has yet to disclose its voter turnout, a slower process for them as the only local township that allowed in-person voting. Looking at the rollcall, which includes 12,369 eligible voters, and the number of votes cast in the mayoral race (4,280), we land at a turnout of 34.6 per cent, up from 24.76 per cent four years ago. That was the biggest improvement Countywide, with 1,304 additional votes cast.
Highlands East reported a turnout of 33.87 per cent, with 2,926 of 8,639 ballots cast. That was an improvement from 21.26 per cent in 2022, when 1,934 people voted. Another interesting point to note here – according to statistics presented by AMO, the township has lost 460 voters over the past four years.
The lowest turnout was seen in Algonquin Highlands, which also had the fewest number of candidates with eight people vying for four positions. The turnout was 31.29 per cent, with 2,330 of 7,446 eligible votes cast. That was up nominally, a little over two per cent, from the 28.9 per cent turnout four years ago.
There were more curious numbers – Algonquin Highlands also, apparently, lost a significant number of voters. The 2022 rollcall was 7,923 – 477 more than this go-around.
Editor Lisa Gervais wrote last week about some of the reports she’s heard from folks who have had to jump through hoops to get themselves on the voter list. Some who claimed to have voted in the area for multiple election cycles said they were told they weren’t included this time around.
That information used to be collected by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) but is now being handled by Elections Ontario. There have clearly been some growing pains.
That doesn’t absolve those who didn’t vote, however. They should have planned ahead to make sure they could.
With cost of living increasing exponentially, I expected those who have filled the proverbial social media complain-o-meter to be out in full force to help forge a new path for their township. Instead, I found some of those same people justifying their decision not to vote with comments like, “they’re all crooks, so why bother?”
While there are some bad eggs, the majority don’t get into politics with aspirations of being corrupt – especially at the local level. These are our neighbours, the postal workers who deliver your mail, the nurses who treat you at the hospital. They’re doing this to try to make their communities better.
Maybe this will be the year I finally call those people out online – because, as the old cliché goes, you lose your right to complain when not participating in the process.
