Municipal elections | The low turnout worries Élection Québec

The low turnout in municipal elections worries the Chief Electoral Officer of Quebec (DGEQ). The organization also intends to survey the population to better understand the phenomenon which is not unique to the beautiful province.

Eric-Pierre Champagne
Press

The most recent municipal election saw a turnout of 38.7% province-wide, compared to the 2017 municipal election of 44.8%.

“Our society must continue to question the means to be taken to interest the voters. I intend to continue studying the factors that influence electoral participation as well as focusing on education for democracy and information to stimulate public interest ”, declared the Chief Electoral Officer, Pierre Reid, by press release.

Earlier this week, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Andrée Laforest, asked the DGEQ to assess the possibility of voting by internet in the municipal elections of 2025.

During the study of Bill 85, tabled last February, which aimed to facilitate the conduct of municipal elections in the context of the pandemic, Minister Laforest gave the DGEQ the mandate to study the possibility of implementing the Internet voting, in anticipation of the next municipal elections, in four years.

Internet voting would not, however, have a significant effect on the participation rate, underlines Elections Quebec, which still sees an interest in facilitating access to the vote.

In the short term, the DGEQ intends to survey Quebecers “in order to determine the factors that influence the exercise of the vote and to understand why a large proportion of electors do not vote”. A similar exercise was carried out after the 2017 municipal elections.

One of the findings is the lower participation rate among young people. “The question of electoral participation does not concern just the new generations, of course, but the gap between the generations is very real: the young people of today vote less than the young people of the preceding generations”, recognizes Pierre Reid.

See the results and participation rates in each city