Voter fatigue, acclamations could spell low turnout in Ontario municipal elections

Dave Meslin is a serial ideas guy.

He started a public space advocacy collective in his 20s, founded Toronto's largest cycling non-profit in his 30s, and led a national electoral reform campaign in his 40s.

Now, in a small community in southwestern Ontario, the 48-year-old Meslin is trying to do something that has largely eluded local governments across the province: get people to vote in a municipal election.

It might be his most daunting task yet. If the past 40 years of municipal elections are any indication, a vast majority of local councils in Ontario could be elected by less than half of eligible voters on Oct. 24.

Political parties spend millions of dollars to promote provincial and federal elections. But in party-less local elections, municipalities themselves are left to fill "part of that vacuum," said Meslin, who authored a 2019 book about rebuilding what he calls a dysfunctional democratic system.

"I've been proposing for 10 years now that municipalities themselves are to blame for low voter turnout, because [of]  the way that they promote or don't promote the nomination period, and [they] also do a terrible job explaining what the election is about and what your options are," said Meslin.

That's something Meslin has been working to change in Grey Highlands, Ont., where he has lived part time for four years and full time as of this year.

Meslin launched the non-partisan Grey Highlands Municipal League earlier this year with support from a dozen volunteers across the municipality.

They organized election information sessions at cafes and libraries. They mailed out postcards in the style of job ads to recruit council candidates. And when the nomination period closed, they sent out a candidate "menu" to residents, he said.

Meslin says he predicts this self-funded, creative and active outreach campaign can boost voter turnout by 50 per cent in Grey Highlands, where just over one in three people voted in the 2018 municipal election.

And while the real test of the concept comes on election day, he says there are promising signs. Going back to 2003, Grey Highlands had never surpassed 15 candidates for council positions. This year, there are 23.

John Beebe, founder of the Democratic Engagement Exchange at Toronto Metropolitan University, called the Grey Highlands experiment one of Ontario's "most ambitious efforts" to boost voter turnout.

Voter turnout across the province in the 2018 municipal elections hit a record-low 38 per cent, according to data published by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario dating back to 1982. In those 40 years, provincewide turnout in municipal elections has never surpassed 50 per cent.

More recently, Beebe notes that some key voter turnout bellwethers are headed in the wrong direction.