Owen Sound council has received a report detailing how the 2022 election went in the city.
During a meeting on Jan. 16, a report was brought forward by City Clerk Briana Bloomfield for information purposes.
The report outlines the steps taken to identify, remove and prevent barriers to accessibility during the election in October, 2022.
The report says actions were taken to address people with disabilities as well as provide information, voting opportunities and assistance for all voters, including moving voting to online or over the phone, extending the voting window to 10 days, and having election help centres and a helpline to provide assistance.
The report also details the community outreach undertaken to inform residents of the election, including using local media outlets, social media, presentations and handing out brochures.
Despite the community outreach undertaken, however, the report says out of the almost 16,000 eligible voters, only 6,230 took part, resulting in a voter turnout of 39 per cent, higher than the province’s 34 per cent turnout.
“We were not overly satisfied with the fact that we had a 39 per cent voter turnout in our municipality, but if you looked at in comparison to all the other Grey County municipalities, we were the top municipality for voter turnout,” says Coun. Travis Dodd. “Obviously 39 per cent is not something to be proud of by any means, but when we start to consider where we were with our comparators with the rest of Grey County, I think that is pretty good when you see some municipalities that only got 27 or 29 per cent turnout.”
The report says voter turnout is based on a number of factors including council stability, people’s desire for change, and the amount of campaigning done.
Of the voters who participated in the election, 90 per cent voted online, and the remaining 10 per cent voted over the phone.
The age group who saw the most voters were between 65 and 74, with those ages between 75 to 84 coming in second.
The report also shows 1,582 people waited until the last day, Oct. 24, 2022 to cast their ballots.
“I found it interesting, it might be something for discussion moving forward, it was a long window where people can vote, there wasn’t a lot of people that took it up in the first couple of days, but certainly during the campaign I wondered if maybe even four or five days of online voting is sufficient. It does allow perhaps new faces more time to be able to get in front of the voters,” says Deputy Mayor Scott Greig.
The city set aside a budget of $100,000 to run the election, but only used $65,000. The remaining funding will be used for future elections and could result in reducing the tax burden on rate payers if council continues to use this method of voting.
