There’s just a week left now until we go to the polls to elect our next municipal council and board of education.
The seven people who are going to be elected to sit as councillors and the two trustees who will represent the community on the board of education will have far more direct impact on day-to-day living than any of the more senior levels of government.
These are the folks who are going to decide how to manage the swelling numbers of elementary school students and what the property tax rates will be.
They also decide which streets will be paved each summer and whether or not money will be spent on big projects like a new ice arena or upgrades to the sewage treatment plant.
Looking around the world right now we find people in a number of places protesting to either preserve their right to vote or to influence current national leaders to reorganize political systems and move to more democrat government structures.
In Hong Kong, student protesters are pushing to have the city’s next leader freely elected in the 2017 elections. The city government insists that can’t be done.
People in Hong Kong are blocking some of the busiest streets in the city, preventing Hong Kong traffic from flowing normally. The protesters have clashed with police in a city that has a reputation for being one of the most peaceful in the world.
The Guardian reported last week on a journalist who has put her job on the line to support the protests. Alice Lau works the daytime hours reporting for a Hong Kong newspaper. In the evening she changes gears, and press credentials, to report on protest issues under an assumed name for a Facebook-based volunteer outlet. She tells The Guardian that she’s carefully separating the two worlds because if her newspaper bosses find out what she’s been doing outside of work, she’ll be fired.
The Arab Spring between 2010 and 2012 is another example of large-scale protests designed to put an end to state-imposed repression and make way for greater Internet freedoms. The result: more elections in countries throughout the Arab world.
People like Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a pro-democracy advocate in Egypt, have gone to jail for sharing their thoughts on shifts toward greater democracy in Egypt. Ibrahim was found guilty of defaming Egypt, and then sentenced to 24 months in jail.
These actions around the world don’t match up with low participation levels we see here when Canadians are asked to choose their leaders. There are people putting their lives on the line or significantly interrupting their usual life patterns to make their feelings about democracy known, while more than half of us here find something more compelling to do when elections come around.
Here in Squamish, only 39 per cent of the eligible voters put pen to paper inside a voting booth during the 2011 elections.
This means that just over a third of the population decided for the rest of the population who gets to make the decisions for the community.
Could you imagine 100 per cent participation in municipal voting?
How incredible would that be?
Those who believe they don’t know enough about the candidates to cast a vote should stop thinking that way. If there is just one candidate who reflects your views, then vote just for that person. It is perfectly acceptable to cast just one vote. In the case of the councillor race, you can vote for six people or any number less than six. The same goes for the school trustee vote. Two people will be elected, but if you only feel one of them is fit for the job and you don’t support the other two, then you can just vote for that one person who reflects your values.
Most people know all this, but for those who don’t know the voting process well, these are important details that could cause a traditional non-voter to have a change of heart.
The election process ends the evening of Nov. 15. Between now and then there will be a number of opportunities to vote in a number of places.
Alice Lau and Saad Eddin Ibrahim would both frown on us if we didn’t vote and our voter participation rate rings in again at somewhere around 39 per cent.
