Stickers, more signatures, and, hopefully, more voters

NEWS — Candidates in November’s Kamloops civic election will have to get a few more signatures on their nomination papers.

City council today took its election procedures bylaw to third reading and bumped the number of required signatures from two to 10, but took out a proposal to require a $100 refundable deposit.

And, voter information cards, “I voted” stickers and experimenting with different polling stations will be tried in an effort to boost voter turnout, which was just under 30 per cent in 2011.

Council talked at length about where to put voting stations and how to encourage turnout, and they liked the option of increasing signatures on nomination forms in hopes of avoiding last-minute candidates who might not be totally serious about the process.

“I like the idea of the 10 people,” said Coun. Tina Lange, who felt some people don’t vote because there are too many candidates.

“I guess we struggle with the issue of voter turnout,” said Coun. Ken Christian. “Anything we can do to experiment to get that higher is money well spent.”

Returning officer Cindy Kennedy said other municipalities have found that increasing the number of signatures means more work for staff, and doesn’t necessarily affect voter interest, but council opted for 10 as a compromise to the current two, or the 25 that cities can insist upon if they want.

Coun. Nelly Dever, who placed eighth in 2011, was worried about the practice of drawing names from a hat if two candidates are tied for eight place — the last available seat — after a judicial recount.

“I would be pissed” if she tied for eighth and lost in a hat draw, she said. “In all honesty, if someone is going to put in six months and $5,000 to $14,000 to run and they lost because somebody pulled a name out of a hat, how would you feel if it happened to you?”

She tried an amendment that would see such ties decided by a new election, but council wasn’t attracted to the idea of spending $125,000 for a by-election even though such an occurrence would be extremely rare.

Council also decided to put Arthur Hatton school back on the list of polling stations after discussing the logistics and distribution of the stations.