A sun filled day provided for some competition for the candidates seeking the votes of the public on Saturday, and judging by the vote totals the temptation to spend time outdoors seemed to win out over spending five minutes indoors to cast a ballot.
Just over 30 percent of Prince Rupert's 8,727 eligible voters cast a ballot in the 2018 Municipal election and the 2,913 ballots cast delivered a return of experienced council members and a pair of newcomers to the political scene on City Council.
As the vote totals were released just over an hour after the polls were closed, two themes loomed large.
The first Mayor Lee Brain would see his desire to keep the current Council team in place fulfilled, with all four incumbents returned to office.
Joining them will be two newcomers, both male, making City Hall a Boys Club for the next four years.
Below are the Results from the City vote totals, which are unofficial until the official results are published at a later date:
Blair Mirau 2,221
Barry Cunningham 2,133
Gurvinder Randhawa 1,841
Wade Niesh 1,811
Taking up seats to join the incumbents will be:
Nick Adey 1,535
Reid Skelton-Morven -- 1,342
Filling out the remainder of the candidate listings were:
Sarah Dantzer 1,177
Charmayne Carlson -- 811
Those Prince Rupert residents that did exercise their democratic right faced low line ups and a smooth process to collect their ballot, fill it out in the style of a lottery ticket card and then to feed the voting machine with some helpful guidance from Election officials at the Jim Ciccone Civic Centre Auditorium.
The Voting stats this year returned Prince Rupert to the levels last found in 2011 when only 35.3% of the eligible voters made it to the polling station.
At thirty 33.3% the 2018 election results will now be the benchmark for low vote totals over the last ten year.
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| At just over 33 percent, the 2018 election campaign will now mark the lowest voter participation levels over the last ten years (Click above to expand chart of results of previous three elections) |
One reason perhaps for the lower turn out this year than four years ago, might have been the lack of a Mayoralty race, with Lee Brain acclaimed to office after no challengers submitted nomination papers for this years election period.
Without the interest of a marquee match up to top the ballot and create some interest, the council campaign at times struggled to gain some attention, competing as it did in the latter stages with the rather strenuous rhetorical commentary over the Ridley Island Tax Agreement, spurred on through Mayor Lee Brain's social media posts.
The insertion of that talking point in the final weeks of the Council race, seemed to steal a lot of the oxygen from the conversations on other issues that the candidates were trying to bring to life.
The returning incumbents will take care of the final duties of the current City Council membership on Monday evening, with the new class of 2018 to take up their work at the first Council session of November.
Over the next few days we'll explore more of the themes of the 2018 campaign and how the candidates both the successful and the disappointed have viewed the vote this year.
We will also keep an eye on the results and reviews of the Port Edward race and that of School District with separate items to call from those two races.
Links to results across the Northwest can be found from our preview item here.
To review the election campaign of 2018 see our archive page here.
To follow all of our notes on Prince Rupert Council see our Council Discussion archive page here.
Cross posted from the North Coast Review.
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