Techies trying to get the vote out this fall

By Phi Doan

Compared to provincial and federal elections, voter turnout for municipal elections tends to be much lower.

Kristina Taylor is the co-founder of CivicTechWR, a group of like-minded techies in Waterloo Region, who says that people don't turn out because they just aren't aware what local governments do.

“I think part of this is a lot of people are driven by big flashy issues and a lot what the municipalities do is just actually run services day to day. But they're also responsible for a lot more than that and I think a lot of people just don't realize how much impact your municipal governments has on your day to day life.” she said.

“Everything to roads and sidewalks to land use planning to public health to social services. It's all your municipal government making those decisions,” she says, pointing out that local elections don't have the benefit of parties simplifying things.” Taylor went on to explain.

The group is addressing the issue by making it easier for the voter to be informed. 

They've built a website and pulling election information together instead of looking at several candidate websites.

“It's a lot of somebody sitting down and just going through. There's about 220 candidates in this election, so it's a matter of going through all of those and searching the internet for information for all those people,” Taylor told The Jennifer Campbell Show on 570 NEWS.

Municipal elections will take place on October 22.

The site is waterlooregionvotes.org

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