Vancouver By-Election Voting Chaos

Where I started lining up at 12.20pm today to vote

Today Vancouver held a by-election for two seats on City Council. One was vacated by Christine Boyle, who successfully jumped into provincial politics, and the other by Adriane Carr, who retired after many years in political office.

There were already signs that voter turnout would be big just from advance voting and the number of mail-in ballots requested.

I went during lunchtime (wolfed down a sandwich beforehand) and was shocked -- shocked -- to see a massive line outside the Dunbar Community centre. A woman who was helping to run the election explained that yes this was the line to vote and that the wait would be 50 minutes -- 5-0 she reiterated. 

However, if you were elderly and could not stand long, or you had a ferry to catch, then by all means come to the priority line. Some followed her in, the rest of us waited, luckily in the sunshine.

An hour later, I exercised my right

The line kept moving, but snaked around the atrium before moving towards a very long corridor. Eventually I got to the front of the line, got registered, was given a ballot, and after choosing the two candidates, had to line up again to submit my ballot.

It took just over an hour to complete from start to finish.

Apparently at other polling stations the wait was over an hour, up to three hours.

Part of the reason can be faulted on city staff for anticipating (wrongly) that hardly anyone votes in by-elections. But surely from reading the news and the advance voting turnout they should know that only opening 25 polling stations compared the 50 in the 2017 by-election is going to result in long lines.

The other issue was that many elderly people did not know they could bypass the long line and walk right in. I advised my parents to do this and they were done in less than 15 minutes, while other seniors bravely stood in line not knowing about this priority line. Again this is city staff's fault for not making people aware of this option. 

Why did so many people turn out for this by-election?

It was a chance for them to take part in a referendum on Mayor Ken Sim and his administration's performance so far.

And the results show it is a complete repudiation of Sim and his ABC party.

Of the 13 candidates running, two won by a wide margin: Sean Orr of COPE (over 34,000 votes), and OneCity's Lucy Maloney (over 33,000).

Although this does not change ABC's majority on council, Orr and Maloney will put more pressure on Sim and ABC to be more accountable for their actions.

"While the results tonight didn't go the way that we hoped for... we look forward to working with the two elected officials," Sim told ABC supporters this evening.

City council meetings are going to be more interesting from now on...