A Shameful Election Result

According to the Town of Collingwood’s election results page, less than half of the electorate here could be bothered to vote this year. This municipal election offered ample opportunity for everyone to vote: weeks of online voting (Oct. 8 to 26), as well as municipal locations for in-person voting on numerous days over the past month, right up to 8 p.m. on voting day. It is deeply embarrassing and shameful that so few actually voted, that so few of our residents actually give a shit about the town they live in.*

More than 15,750 of our residents were too lazy, too stupid, too self-absorbed, or too hostile to democracy to vote this election. Or maybe they share a combination of those attributes. Maybe they couldn’t be bothered to keep themselves informed about municipal affairs and politics. Maybe they couldn’t bear to tear themselves away from their phones for the two minutes it took to fill in an online ballot. Maybe they were too busy playing online Candy Crush or some other vapid browser game. Whatever the reason, they should all be deeply ashamed of themselves.

That means the returning mayor got elected with less than 15% of the eligible vote. This is how democracy dies, not with a bang, but with a shrug.**

Municipal governments deal with the things that affect us every day: roads, sewers, traffic, building permits, subdivision approvals, water and wastewater, dog licences, local parks, the library and museum, parking, the waterfront, property taxes… but more than half of Collingwood clearly doesn’t care about any of those things.

I am deeply disappointed in the turnout. Perhaps Collingwood doesn’t deserve better than what we got from these results. There’s an old saying that in a democracy, you get the government you deserve. Apparently we don’t deserve the best of the candidates.

This is a day for facepalms by everyone — the minority of residents, it seems — who cares about local politics.

Notes:

* The town reports “A total of 10, 233 electors cast a ballot in the election, representing a voter turnout of 39.37 percent.” By my calculation, that means there are 25,992 eligible voters in Collingwood. The turnout was essentially the same as in 2022, when only 39.67% of eligible voters cared enough about this town to vote. I suspect this year’s abysmally low turnout includes many from the same groups of voters and non-voters as in 2022.

** While I was happy with some of the results, I was also mortified by others. Obviously, many voters didn’t care about the past records or personal histories of some of those they voted into office. Nor do they care about the skyrocketing property taxes we can now expect here.

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