Voter turnout way down in both Thunder Bay ridings

Voter turnout plummeted across both Thunder Bay ridings in 2022 – and a lower percentage turned out to cast a ballot that the woeful provincial average.

In Thunder Bay-Superior North, 24,631 of the 57,590 registered voters went to the polls this year, a 42.77 per cent turnout rate.

Four years ago 30,299 voters voted, with 56,277 eligible voters, a 53.84 per cent rate.

Turnout in Thunder Bay-Atikokan was identical.

Of the 62,182 eligible voters, 26,625 voted, also a 42.77 per cent rate.

In 2018, 54.7 per cent of the 59,996 eligible voters cast ballots in the riding.

Province-wide, voter turnout was just 43.03 per cent, down more than 13 percentage points over four years ago, when it was 56.67 per cent.

Conservative Kevin Holland took Thunder Bay-Atikokan, edging incumbent NDP candidate Judith Monteith-Farrell by 898 votes.

In Thunder Bay-Superior North, the NDP’s Lise Vaugeois led from start to finish, beating Conservative Peng You by 800 votes. – tbnewswatch.com

article website here

Sooo, 57.23% of eligible voters did not bother to cast a ballot.  I would think that someone in government might think that MAYBE, just MAYBE, there is something wrong with the system of choosing political representatives.

If you look at the election results,

Thunder Bay-Superior North results

Lise Vaugeois  (NDP) – 8,404 (34.12%)

Peng You (Conservative) – 7,604 (30.87%)Shelby

Ch’ng  (Liberal) – 6,966 (28.28%)

Tracey MacKinnon (Green) – 738 (3.00%)

Stephen Hufnagel (ONP) – 338 (1.37%)

Kathy Suutari (NBP) – 314 (1.27%)

Andy Wolff (NRT) – 145 (0.59%)

Adam Cherry (CNS) – 125 (0.5%)

Vaugeois won with only 34.12% of the vote.  That means 65.88% of the voters did NOT vote for her.  That is two-thirds of the voters.

Thunder Bay-Atikokan results

Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario
Kevin Holland: 7,816 votes (36.99 per cent)

Ontario New Democratic Party
Judith Monteith-Farrell: 6,767 votes (32.03 per cent)

Liberal Party of Ontario
Rob Barrett: 5,215 votes (24.68 per cent)

Green Party of Ontario
Eric Arner: 601 votes (2.84 per cent)

New Blue Party of Ontario
David Tommasini: 423 votes (2 per cent)

Ontario Party
Dan Criger: 194 votes (0.92 per cent)

Northern Ontario
Kenneth Jones: 114 votes (0.54 per cent)

Once again, Holland won with 36.99% of the vote.  That means 63.01% of the people who cast ballots did NOT vote for him.

If you add in the 57.33% of the eligible voters who did not vote,  those percentages get even smaller.  A LOT smaller.

Province wide, the Progressive Conservative party won a majority with 1,912,651 votes, just under 42% of the votes cast.  58% of the votes cast did not vote for the PCs. They won 83 seats.

And it gets even more problematic…

The NDP (1,111,318) and Liberals (1,117,051) received almost exactly the same number of votes YET the NDP won 31 seats in Queens Park while the Liberals who actually received MORE votes only won 8 seats.

ALSO 83 seats for 1,912,651 votes compared to 39 seats for 2,228,369votes.

The system is FUBAR’d.  The first past the post system of choosing government representatives needs to go away. A possible replacement is the ranked voting system.   At least that system ensures the winner of each riding receives at least 50plus one percent of the votes cast.  It will also mean that all votes cast will be important.  More people might participate.

The present system MUST go.  Its time. Ranked voting with 100% paper ballots.

I wonder if Justin and Jagmeet are paying attention to the poor showing of the Liberals and NDP?   They should.