With Vancouverites allowed to vote at any polling station across the city for the first time ever, it’s tough to know for sure if individual results are a true reflection of each neighbourhood.
But from looking at the numbers, I’m guessing a lot of Vancouver residents voted close to home. And, as it turns out, a lot of residents did take the time to vote — an estimated 44 per cent (187,000 eligible voters) up from the 34 per cent who made the effort during the 2011 municipal election.
Vision Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson was re-elected and Vision maintained control of city council but was almost shut out on park board. Vision tied for seats on school board, leaving the lone Green Party trustee Janet Fraser to play tie breaker.
Preliminary results for park board show that while Vision Vancouver newcomer Catherine Evans topped the ballot with 64,707 votes, the NPA was close behind with John Coupar (62,970), Casey Crawford (59,882), Sarah Kirby-Yung (56,828) and Erin Shum (56,762). The Green Party’s Stuart Mackinnon placed sixth with 56,762 votes followed by the Green’s Michael Wiebe with 55,607. It will be interesting to watch how the now NPA-dominated park board operates over the next four years when the Vision-dominated city council still holds the purse strings.
Like many journalists, I work better with a deadline so despite the eight days of advanced voting available to Vancouver residents, I found myself in line at Killarney Community Centre at 11 a.m. on election day. As I waited to have my ballot validated, I noticed a couple of Elections B.C. staffers discussing a ballot that had been purposely spoiled out of protest — scribbles across the ballot were visible from where I stood. I thought to myself, who gets up, presumably gets dressed, travels to a voting location in freezing weather and then waits in line to waste a vote? Thankfully, many other residents asserted their democratic right, which was demonstrated by long lineups at most voting stations.
But back to individual results for communities across the city, which give a glimpse of how election night might have gone had a ward system been in place instead of the current “at large” system. A ward is one section of a larger authority — for example, Kitsilano could be one ward of Vancouver.
While searching through the individual results I found that while some candidates didn’t win a seat in the overall election, they did very well in specific communities, including former Vision Vancouver park board commissioner Niki Sharma. She failed in her run for council but she placed first at the Ross Street Temple poll in Sunset. She also would have won a seat had it been up to voters in False Creek, where incumbent park board candidate Trevor Loke also did well. Loke did not win a second term on park board.
NPA mayoral candidate Kirk LaPointe would have won by a landslide if it was up to Coal Harbour voters, who also gave the nod to seven NPA councillors out of 10, five park board commissioners out of seven and five out of nine school board trustees. (The school board is a provincially regulated body selected by voters during the municipal election.)
Voters in Killarney and Dunbar favoured LaPointe as mayor. In Killarney, the majority of votes went to seven NPA councillors, five park board commissioners and five school board trustees. In Dunbar, voters favoured eight NPA and two Green Party councillors and six NPA and one Green Party park board commissioner.
Some have suggested the ongoing dispute between the city’s community centre associations and park board accounted for Vision’s loss of control of the board, which could be the case in Killarney, Sunset and Kerrisdale. According to the numbers in Kerrisdale, the NPA would have almost swept mayor and council, park board and school board, while the party also dominated in Sunset. But while Hastings Community Centre Association is one of six centres embroiled in a lawsuit with the park board, results in that neighbourhood show Vision Vancouver dominated across the board, with a little help from the Green Party.
So whether or not a ward system is the way to go in future elections is up for debate, but one thing is for certain — these newly elected and re-elected politicians have their work cut out for them in specific neighbourhoods following a lengthy and sometimes bitter election season.
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