Eligible voters is not the number of permanent residents in a township

Craig Bakay | Oct 10, 2018

We know you’re probably all wondering just how many eligible voters there are in Frontenac County municipal elections this year.

One quirk of living in cottage country is that often there are a lot more eligible voters than there are permanent residents and Frontenac County is no exception to this rule.

For example, in North Frontenac Township, the population according to the 2016 census is 1,898. However, because there are an awful lot of seasonal residents, there are actually 5,984 eligible voters. This twist here is that all of the Council positions and all but one school board position were filled by acclamation. So, no matter how many eligible voters there are, unless you’re an Algonquin & Lakeshore Catholic District School Board or a French Language Separate board supporter, you have nothing to vote on.

The concept of more voters than population holds true for Frontenac Islands and Central Frontenac townships as well.

On the Islands, there is a population of 1,760 people and 2,201 eligible voters.

In Central Frontenac, there are twice as many eligible voters as there are residents. The Central Frontenac 2016 census showed a population of 4,373 people with 9,067 eligible voters.

In South Frontenac, the trend falters however. South has a population of 18,646 but on 17,689 eligible voters.

Now just because there are all these eligible voters doesn’t mean they’ll all cast ballots.

For example, in 2014, there were 17,413 eligible voters but only 6,447 of them participated for a participation rate of 37.02 per cent.