Election Wrap Up

Jeff Green | Oct 12, 2022

With electronic voting now well established in municipal elections in our region, the coverage schedule in the Frontenac News is based upon an election date of October 17, the start of the electronic/phone voting period, instead of the official October 24 election day.

For that reason, we made sure to complete all of our all candidates meetings and candidate profiles for the four municipalities that we cover to be completed by October 13, the date of this week’s Frontenac News.

This week’s edition includes the candidate profiles for Kennebec (District 1) in Central Frontenac, while the rest of Central Frontenac’s profiles were published last week (October 6). In addition, the profiles for all 4 districts of South Frontenac and the candidates for Mayor, are included in this week’s edition of the paper.

I don’t mind saying that it has been a large task arranging for the meetings and the profiles. By the end of the day, 13 meetings will have taken place, and 55 candidate profiles published. We would like to thank all of the candidates for responding to the invitation to the meetings, and for responding to our request for an interview, speaking frankly during interviews, and checking the text when it was sent to them.

As errors inevitably crept in to the profiles and the candidates who have been impacted, were disappointed, but gracious in response, which is much appreciated. There is no real concern that a mistake in the paper would costs anyone votes, but our goal is to treat all candidates equally and errors impact that. As well, people running for office like to control their message, and random errors by a third party like a newspaper can be very irritating, so I want to thank the candidates for their response.

Looking at the election as a whole, there are good signs and not so good signs for local democracy. The fact that, 16 of the 17 potential contests are in fact contests, the only exception being the post of Central Frontenac Mayor where Frances Smith was acclaimed, is a very good sign. Even the one non-contest does not necessarily mean that no one else wants to be Mayor of Central Frontenac. It could mean that no one thought they could beat Fran at this time.

We always look at the “old men” demographic in municipal politics. As for the old part, it is indeed easier to take on a council position for people who are retired or at a stage in their career when their time is more flexible. The job of councillors pays poorly, even for the basic time commitment that is required, and the job of Mayor/Reeve pays extremely poorly for the time commitment it entails.

Among the candidates running for council, throughout the region, there are younger people running this time, people in the midst of their working careers. If some of them are elected, it will lower the average of council members for the first time in many years, which can only be seen as a good thing.

The men part is harder to rationalise. Of the 56 candidates in this election, 47 are men and 9 are women, just over 16%. That kind of ratio likely reflects issues about how our municipal political system works, because it is not much different than all of the past elections in our townships. There is nothing about the role of the member of council or head of council position that favours men over women.

With so few women running, it is also impossible to say whether voters favour men or women when they vote in municipal elections in our region, but it is clear that men are more likely to run for office than women, young or old.