A collision between the provincial and municipal elections in 2020 represents an opportunity to make improvements to both elections.
Elections Saskatchewan has suggested moving the provincial election to April 2021 because the municipal elections are scheduled to take place five days after the planned provincial election date of Oct. 28, 2020.
Alternatives include moving the municipal elections to seeding season in April or having the provincial election early.
The suggestion comes because there’s fear that voters will get confused and tiring of campaigning with two elections going on.
I’m not convinced that will be the case. In fact, the two elections should be moved to the same day.
Why?
The largest reason is voter turnout. Municipal elections have abysmal turnouts, around the 30 per cent range. Provincial election, on the other hand, tend to have more than 50 per cent. Why not take advantage of that? If citizens are there to vote for their MLA, they might as well vote for their mayors, reeves and councillors while they’re at it.
Another reason to hold them at the same time would be to apply the same rules and scrutiny to municipal candidates as the provincial candidates do. Municipal candidates don’t even have to file how much they spent if it’s not in the municipality’s rules. The best way to do this: have Election Saskatchewan take over the administration of municipal elections, like Elections B.C. does over in British Columbia.
Why should we have to do some weird contortionism to spread provincial and municipal elections apart when there’s benefits to having them together.
