Monday, October 24 is municipal election day across Ontario and here in Welland we have early voting taking place the week of October 3 at Civic Square and the weekends of October 15-16 and 22-23 at Seaway Mall. Also, this time around, on election day we will have the ability to vote at any of the eight polling stations across the city, not just the one which is closest to our residence.

But some of you might be asking, why should I vote?

I won’t insult you by using that old saying “If you choose not to vote, you don’t have the right to complain” as justification.

Let’s just look at the data from the 2018 election.

Only 34% of eligible voters exercised their rights in electing the council members, regional councilors, school board trustees and mayor. Now you might say that 13,222 accepted ballots is a lot of folks taking part in the democratic process across the city. But if you start to drill down to individual wards, fewer than fifty votes separated the second place (winning) councilor from the third place runner up in one ward and under two hundred votes in another ward.

Suddenly that one vote starts to be a lot more meaningful.

Even if a small percentage of the eligible voters who decided not to vote had done so, that might have resulted in a very different looking council. What that means is that even though we say we want a council which represents the city’s population, the one we have is representative of only a minority.

So if you are as concerned about the current issues facing Welland as I am, take an hour or two to learn about who is proposing to represent you and then take another hour (or less) and vote for the candidates who will best advocate for your concerns. After all, two hours is under 0.01% of the time that a new council is in power!

For more information on my campaign platform, please visit kiron4welland.com.

Authorized by the Official Agent for the Kiron Bondale Campaign.

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