Voter Turnout in Maple Ridge Is Embarrassingly Low. That Is a Problem Worth Taking Seriously.

Local elections in Maple Ridge regularly see turnout below thirty percent. The decisions made by those elected affect everyone. The disengagement of most residents from the process that makes those decisions is a democratic problem.

The 2022 municipal election in Maple Ridge saw voter turnout of approximately twenty-seven percent. This means that the council making decisions about land use, infrastructure, policing, and community services for a city of close to ninety thousand people was elected by fewer than one in three eligible voters.

This is not a Maple Ridge-specific problem. Low municipal voter turnout is endemic across British Columbia and across Canada. But endemic does not mean acceptable, and the fact that low turnout is common does not reduce its significance for the quality of local democracy.

The decisions made by Maple Ridge council — about where development goes, how roads are built, what services are funded, how the drug crisis is managed — are among the most consequential decisions affecting daily life in this community. They deserve the engagement of more than a quarter of the people they affect.

The barriers to voting in local elections are real: off-cycle election dates, limited awareness of candidates and issues, a sense that local government is impenetrable or uninteresting. The municipality can address some of these barriers — through better voter education, through making registration and voting easier, through council deliberations that are genuinely accessible.

A community that wants good local government needs to participate in selecting it. Maple Ridge has work to do on both sides of that equation.

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