A commentary by a newly elected member of Victoria city council.
I was stunned and disappointed to read Geoff Young’s recent commentary, “Fight gerrymandering in local elections,” criticizing the decision to situate advance polling stations at the University of Victoria and Our Place.
Young is an experienced councillor who has long professed a devotion to good governance and democratic practice, but he engaged in dog-whistled voter suppression, and needlessly raised “suspicions” about so-called “vote harvesting” of traditionally marginalized voting blocks: students and the unhoused.
It’s strange that Young chose to pick on these two groups. According to Elections Canada, the youth vote trails way behind that of older voters.
In 2021, youth turnout was “28 percentage points lower than that for the 65-to-74 age group.” Robust data on voter turnout for the unhoused is lacking, but the few resources we have suggest that homeless people make up a tiny percentage of the electorate and vote in very low numbers.
By placing voting stations close to where marginalized people live, work, and spend time, we, as a society, help break down barriers to voting, which I would think that all champions of democracy, including Young, would want. Extensive evidence proves that fewer voting stations result in lower voter turnout.
Is this what Young wants?
The decision to criticize the UVic voting station is particularly odd, as it is not only valued by busy students, but also by the many staff administrators, food service workers, sessional instructors, and other employees who work at UVic and struggle to find time, between other responsibilities, to get out and vote in municipal elections.
The 2020 Victoria byelection mustered only 17.5 per cent voter turnout, which was shockingly low. That election had a reduced number of voting stations.
One North Park resident told me that they walked all the way to the Conference Centre to vote in that election. Not everyone has the time or wherewithal to go the extra mile – literally – to engage in one’s constitutional right: the franchise.
Given the recent attempts to suppress the vote in the United States, and the belief that certain people are less “entitled” to participate in democracy, it worries me greatly to see a respected local politician falling prey to such fallacious and harmful assumptions about voter behaviour and access to the ballot.
We should all want elected officials who protect voters’ rights and seek to increase voter turnout. That’s the basic duty of democracy.
