History of voting
Posted Jan 29, 2014 05:07:37 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
While it’s still too early to determine the enthusiasm for voter participation in October’s upcoming election, we can take a look back to compare some previous elections.
In Cambridge, according to the city’s online archives, mayor Doug Craig won his fourth term in 2010 with 11,230 votes, which is 48 per cent of 23,494 votes.
The 2006 election in November was the year where election term for council memebers was increased from three to four years. For Cambridge the final count was 22, 521 people voting out of the city’s 85, 600 eligible voters–so only 26 per cent casted ballots in the 238 polls located around the city. Cambridge’s highest year of participation was 1988 where 44 per cent of people voted.
Looking at at Kitchener, according to the city’s online archives 27 per cent of eligible voters took part in the vote. This was a minor improvement compared to the 2006 election where 25 per cent of residents voted.
Susan Greatrix is the city clerk and director for legislative services for City of Waterloo. She told 570News that as of September 10, 2010, “there were 66,211 eligible electors in the City of Waterloo, with a turnout on Election Day of 27,253 voters.”
Out of the surrounding townships, in 2010, North Dumfries had the higHest voter turnout with a participation of 49 per cent, where Wellesley had the lowest with 11 per cent. Waterloo had the highest participation out of the cities with 41 per cent of people who voted, while Cambridge was the lowest with 29 per cent. Combining all the communities together, 32 per cent of the entire region took part in voting. But this percentage was an improvement compared to the 2006 election where only 26 per cent of eligible people voted.
