#VanElxn22 | Tuning Out, Disengagement, and Low Civic Voter Turnout, Likely

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When Canadians’ engagement with the news dropped significantly in 2021, the plunge was in some ways seen as inevitable.

The change in news consumption habits last year came after two years with no shortage of storylines — the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, both a provincial and a federal election, the ongoing circus of the politics of Trump, and a nationwide reckoning over race, Indigenous relations and related police violence.

For many Canadians stuck at home, there was plenty of time to tune in.

However, the pace of news waned toward the end 2021, as did interest in the Liberal administration in Ottawa, and politics in general. The news cycle in 2022, comparatively, has more closely resembled the frenetic years of COVID, between the war in Ukraine, and existential threats to democracy and the planet.

Yet eight months into 2022, data collected by a Leger / Public Square Research poll shows Canadians are even more disengaged than they were this time last year, with a quarter of Canadians tuning out “too depressing” political news.

In fact, most Canadians who are tuning out the news say they’re doing so because the sheer negativity of what they read and hear is turning them off from politics.

According to the Leger poll, one-fifth of Canadians engage with political news “throughout the day,” while a third of Canadians engage with it daily and 22% engage with it a few times a week.

About a quarter of Canadians are almost entirely disengaged from the news, with 10% of Canadians actively avoiding political news, and 5% engaging with politics only through conversations with friends, with 10% reading the news only a few times a month.

Fifty percent of Canadians disengage, saying they’re “tired of the negativity in politics”, 38% saying the news is too depressing.

News engagement across all platforms in the first half of 2022 — website visits, news app sessions, cable viewership, and time spent on social media — is down compared to the first half of 2021. The steepest decline — 50 percent — pertains to engagement with news articles on social media, and probably stems from changes Facebook made to its news curation model.

Cable viewership news on CBC, CTV and Global 1 “is, on average, down 19% in prime time,” losses that skew heavily across all three news networks.

The Leger / Public Square Research poll also finds a mismatch between the issues dominating the headlines and what Canadians are concerned about. Only 16% of Canadians said they were concerned about the Pope’s visit to Canada and 35% said they were concerned about the backlog in immigration processing in Canada.

“The role of the news isn’t always to give people the news they want to hear,” says Heather Bastedo, who runs Public Square Research and produced the Leger survey for The Hub, the survey to which we are referring today. “But the media needs to make the connection to people’s lives with these stories. Most people aren’t flying out from Pearson, but the fact that the government can’t run things should be an issue.”

Thirty-four percent of Canadians said they’re concerned about long lineups at passport offices, while 21% said they simply don’t care.  The number one issue for Canadians is rising interest rates. Forty-five percent say they’re are very concerned about it, with 26% saying they’re somewhat concerned; 13% say it doesn’t affect them. The war in Ukraine is similarly pressing for Canadians. Forty percent of Canadians are very concerned, with another 35% somewhat concerned.

As might be expected, younger Canadians are least likely to be highly engaged news consumers, with only 13% Canadians aged 18 to 34 reporting that they read or listen to the news throughout the day, compared to 27% of people over the age of 55. Young people are less likely to be totally disengaged than people aged 35 to 54, though. Among Canadians under age 35, about 11% report having no interest in politics, compared to 14% of Canadians aged 35 to 54.

The numbers above underscore a collective weariness among the voting public.

Higher turnout in federal, provincial and civic elections is a reflection of vibrant, robust democratic practice. Conversely, low voter turnout depicts cynicism, apathy, anomie and alienation, triggering voters not to exercise their right to vote.

A representative democracy calls on citizens to participate in the electoral process. Many voters believe they know about likely election winners, and their single vote won’t make a difference. This is a classic example of a collective action problem.

In 2018, 39.4% of  the Vancouver public voted, a record voter turnout to be sure — which still meant that a whopping 60.6% of the voting public didn’t vote. Why?

  • Lack of interest. Not everyone tunes into the nightly news every evening. Some people are simply not interested in politics, others outright hate it. The last thing they want to do is research politicians or read about the latest election;
  • Lack of knowledge. Often coinciding with a lack of interest, many people also don’t know much about elections or politics. They’re not aware of who’s running, and sometimes they don’t even know there’s an election coming up;
  • Disillusionment. A thread of cynicism that runs through the Canadian electorate. Many believe their vote either doesn’t count or doesn’t matter, so why bother voting? In Vancouver, some of this has to do with the lack of a representational neighbourhood voting system (sometimes called a “ward system”). In addition, many potential voters feel it’s pointless to vote for parties and candidates, because they don’t believe that any of those parties or candidates represent their interests;
  • Voter fatigue. Even the most dedicated voter may feel worn down by the sheer number of names on the ballot, most of whom they don’t know. Additionally, long lines and difficulty voting may discourage individuals from going to the ballot box..

Low voter turnout is also evident from the fact political campaigns rely on data that serves to ignore popular voices on issues of importance, allowing candidates for office and their political parties to feel safe, ignoring the public will while failing to comply with even the most amorphous of campaign promises.

In these cynical times, most campaign managers, political parties and candidates know few people are going to turn out at the polls, so why bother crafting a message? In this scenario, amidst an abundance of voter fatigue, some political voices win, while most of the public — particularly those who choose not to cast a ballot — lose, getting government they don’t want, rather than government they need.

#VanElxn2022 | The Season’s Most Important All Candidates Meetings

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The buzz we’ll see created during the 45-day civic election season will occur at the various, and critically important, all-candidates meetings that will be held throughout September, leading up to Election Day, on Saturday, October 15th.

In 2018, the well-attended and phenomenally moving UBC Women’s Club of Vancouver all-women-candidates meeting was a key factor in getting City Councillor Rebecca Bligh elected to office. Ms. Bligh knocked us out with her knowledge of city governance, and the challenges faced by its citizens — of course, it didn’t hurt that Ms. Bligh’s gregarious partner, Laura, kibbitzed with us all night long (talk about someone having your number! … omigosh …).

Today’s VanRamblings will be given over to presenting the crucial all-candidate events you should put on your election calendar, sure to challenge your assumptions, and certain to inform, as entertainingly a good time as you’ll have over the course of the next 48 days, and critical to your understanding of the issues we all face in 2022’s crucially important Vancouver civic election.

2022’s Vancouver Civic Must-Attend Mayoral Debates

By far, the most important Mayoral debate to attend in September, will occur at the Britannia Community Centre, in cavernous Gym D, where in 2014 Vision Vancouver Councillor Andrea Reimer blew the rafters off the room — in a hostile room, too, consolidating that, whatever you thought of her — many, many were not fans —  Andrea Reimer was a must-elect to Vancouver City Council.

Monday, September 19th’s must-attend Britannia Community Centre all-candidates Mayoral event will be moderated by the phenomenally inquisitive Kirk LaPointe, who was the Non-Partisan Association’s candidate for Mayor in 2014.

If there’s a more erudite and well-reasoned writer — and former political candidate for office — in Vancouver, we don’t know who that person might be. The Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods folks who organized the all-candidates Mayoral event scored a coup in landing Mr. LaPointe as the night’s moderator.

As has long proved to be the case, and generally the best-attended of the Mayoral debates, takes place at the Christ Church Cathedral, on the northeast corner of Burrard and Georgia, with a seating capacity of only 600, the last Sunday of the election Mayoral debate is generally packed to the rafters, with more than 850 eager voters in attendance). No official notice of the event as yet, but you can be certain the event will occur.

Cathedral Mayoral Debate

Sunday, October 9th, 2022
1:30 p.m. — 3 p.m.
Christ Church Cathedral
650 Burrard Street, at Georgia

Civic Election All-Candidate Debates: Council, School & Park Board

Here we are on Tuesday, August 30th, 2022, and truth to tell it’s still a tad early for those who are organizing all-candidates debates / forums for our myriad City Council candidates seeking office in 2022, not to mention their civic body counterparts seeking to secure a position on the Vancouver School Board’s Board of Education, or a Park Board Commissioner’s position, sitting around the table at Vancouver’s Board of Parks and Recreation’s decision-making table, snuggled within that cherished environmental jewel, (Lord) Stanley Park.

Believe us when say, though, there’ll be debates & all-candidates events aplenty that will occur over the course of the next seven-plus weeks, as anxious politicos and pundits, not to mention Vancouver’s citizenry, await the outcome of the 2022 Vancouver civic election late in the evening of October 15th.

As we’d promised our friend Dulcy Anderson at Kitsilano’s Greek Days, way back in June, we would write to her about the seminal all-candidates events that constitute the two most important candidate events that occur for all candidates running for Vancouver City Council, and the one most important debate dedicated to championing women candidates seeking office in 2022.

Dulcy, we apologize for not apprising you of  the following prior to this date — although arriving  (more than) a bit late, it’s what we’d meant to write to you two months ago, which you’ll now finally find directly below …

Dulcy, each Vancouver municipal election, the good folks who are members of the Residents Association of Mount Pleasant sponsor a bangin‘ all candidates meeting for those who are seeking to become a Vancouver City Councillor. Although RAMP has not revealed the specific date for their 2022 Council all-candidates open forum, just wait a week or so, and all will be revealed to you.

What makes the RAMP all-candidates open forum a must-participate-in event?

  • Held at the warmly inviting Heritage Hall, at 15th & Main, each election year, 25 Council candidates are asked to take a seat on the stage, while 400 or more engaged citizens pepper the candidates with questions;
  • The RAMP forum is the most respectful of all the all-candidate forums held each civic election cycle, open to women and men, and representing the diverse multi-cultural mosaic that comprises the city we love. No cat calling, no acting out, no bad behaviour of any kind allowed— although in all the civic election years past we’ve attended, the audience has always conducted themselves responsibly, unlike the cretin who recently ambushed Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister;
  • All the press in town turn up at the Residents Association of Mount Pleasant all-candidates forum, print, radio, television, independent journalists and muckrakers, bloggers, substackers and those who write what they feel on Medium. In this day and age, you want that coverage;.

Because it’s September, the evening the RAMP event takes place, the weather will be cooler, as will the temperature of the audience politely gathered inside Heritage Hall. The camaraderie of the 25 candidates on stage is something to behold, reflecting well on how our various engagements ideally should be.

Each Vancouver civic election cycle for decades, the University Women’s Club of Vancouver sponsors a well-attended women candidates forum, moderated in 2018 by VanRamblings’ friend, Lynne Kent — but as she was saying to us last week, at the TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver town hall, as the UBC organization transitions, in 2022  will be organized and moderated by a younger group of women members. Dulcy, you’ll to want to be a part of this event.

The 2018 University Women’s Club of Vancouver (video above) was a bumptious, informative and signal event in the previous Vancouver municipal election,  the event providing women candidates seeking office a forum to discuss the issues of importance to all Vancouver voters, and most particularly to women voters and their lived experience. Women vote in exponentially higher numbers than men, in general women’s innate social conscience determining the candidates for whom they will cast their ballot.

In 2022, women candidates for City Council will save our city, and will work with integrity and élan towards a fairer and more just city for all of us.

Dulcy, because we’re aware you know & support City Councillor Christine Boyle — and given Ms. Boyle emerged the victor at the raucous 2018 Last Candidate Standing event (see video below) — we suggest you meet with Councillor Boyle to discuss her rewarding experience of Last Candidate Standing.

We’ll also suggest an out-of-the blue and phenomenally witty indie candidate for City Council in 2018, Elke Porter — she and her family are longtime Kitsilano residents — contact you, in order that she might discuss her experience of Last Candidate Standing, to provide you with further context and insight.

#VanElxn2022 | Plumping | Casting A Ballot for Only Your Chosen Candidates

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There is no grand prevailing wisdom about how people should vote.

It’s hard enough to get people to show up at the polls as it is.

But once voters show up to cast their ballot, there are competing views about how we should cast our votes: in this case, to plump or not to plump.

As former Vancouver City Councillor Anne Roberts wrote on a chilly November 14th day, three weeks after Vancouver’s 2014 civic election …

“In the end, the vast majority of voters are going to do what they typically do in Vancouver’s dysfunctional at-large voting system: they’re going to vote slates. People will mostly select 5 to 8 Councillors from the party of their choice and then, perhaps, vote for one or two others. Given there are too many candidates and parties to become fully informed, it’s not a bad strategy.

That is, unless you know about plumping. For individual voters, plumping is really the only way to boost your voter power. Plumping is when you cast votes for your civic party of your choice, only, instead of the full 10. The advantage is you focus your voting power on the ones you really want to win, and don’t dilute the power of your vote by voting for someone who could end up beating your preferred candidates.”

Voter turnout in British Columbia civic elections is generally well below 40%.

In 2005, 32% of eligible voters cast their ballot in that year’s Vancouver civic election — when Non Partisan Association Mayor Sam Sullivan and a majority NPA Council were elected to office — with only 31% bothering to vote in the 2008 change civic election, which saw the newly formed Vision Vancouver civic party elected to a majority at Vancouver City Hall. By 2011, a  whopping 34% of eligible Vancouver voters found their way to the polls on election day, Saturday, November 19th.

Counting the Votes

Where there are multiple Council positions, 10 in Vancouver, to be filled, the votes on each ballot are counted as being of equal value to each other. Even though a voter might have a distinct order of preference among the candidates there is no mechanism for such preferences to be shown on the ballot.

Candidates are elected consecutively according to who receives the largest number of votes. There is no pre-determined percentage of the overall vote required to be gained before a candidate is elected so a candidate can be elected with a very much smaller percentage of the vote than under any other electoral system.

Plumping

Plumping allows voters to vote for fewer than the number of candidates to be elected. It permits voters to concentrate their voting power on those they support, rather than being constrained to also vote for those they oppose. Rather than voting for all 10 Council positions, a voter may choose to vote for simply one, two or more should they wish, in the City of Vancouver, where slates tend to run, voting only for your party of choice.

In Vancouver, the at-large system is in some ways opposite to the first-past-the-post system in the provincial and federal elections. At-large means there are no “neighbourhood ridings” — sometimes called wards — within the municipality or regional district, as is the case in every other province, save B.C..

Aside from casting one ballot for Mayor, voters will vote from a pool of candidates, and select form one candidate to however many candidates they choose to sit on Vancouver City Council, Park Board or School Board.

Eligible voters in the City of Vancouver are allowed to select as many candidates as there are seats on the respective councils, but should they?

In 2022, the answer to that question is a firm, “No”.

Having spoken with strategists working within the 10 civic parties offering candidates for election in 2022,  civic campaign managers are recommending their voters “plump their ballot” — voting only for the candidate(s) they really want to see elected. “Pro-plumping” strategists are telling their voters that giving a vote to someone you really don’t care about, simply to fill the ballot, weakens the position of those you really do want in. Too many votes for a candidate running with a party you don’t support not only weakens your vote for the candidates you want to see win on election night, it dramatically increases the likelihood that your favourite candidates may lose, as a broad swath of the limited number of voters expected to turn out in this year’s October municipal election, in casting a vote for an “add on” candidate enhances that candidate’s ability to actually triumph at the polls.

Even respected Vancouver civic affairs journalist, Charlie Smith, editor of The Georgia Straight, is recommending Vancouver voters “plump their vote”, in this instance when casting a ballot for candidates running for office to become a Board of Education trustee on the Vancouver School Board.

“The only sensible choice for supporters of mask mandates — and safer schools for the many kids with immunocompromised family members — is to only vote for Dr. Zeidler and withhold voting for the NPA, ABC Vancouver, Vision Vancouver, COPE, OneCity Vancouver, Green, Progress Vancouver, or any other party that’s putting candidates up for school trustee.

Voting for candidates other than Dr. Zeidler lessens her chance of winning and promoting actions that will save lives of school students, staff, and their families.”

Mr. Smith must have read Peter Babel’s Meridia article on bullet voting, which is what they — unsurprisingly — call plump voting down south …

Basically, bullet voting — also known as single-shot voting or plump voting — is a tactic used when voters who could vote for multiple candidates actually vote only for the one candidate whom they most want to see among the winners. Imagine a municipal election, for example, in which 65 candidates are running for ten open seats and voters can vote for only ten candidates. Ultimately, the election will produce 10 winners, yes, but using the bullet vote tactic the voter increases the total vote count for the candidate s/he most wants included among the 10 winners — without increasing the vote count of any of the other candidates running for office. By plumping their ballot, the voter strategically avoids inadvertently helping any other candidate gain more votes than the candidates they truly prefer, and whose win they want to secure more than any other.

Fans of plumping argue that most people are not familiar with enough candidates running to be able to cast completely informed votes.

So many people want to avoid casting ballots for people who aren’t necessarily deserving of that vote. All of which nicely plays into the hands of seasoned campaign strategists operating behind the scenes in this year’s Vancouver municipal election, but who are “in control” of this year’s all-important 2022 Vancouver municipal election campaigns.

Arts Friday | 2022’s Film Festival Season | An Oscar Season in Preview

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With cooling weather finally having taken hold, and the heat of the summer season soon to be but a fond memory, today VanRamblings will set about to preview the always provocative cinematic season of serious import,  the fall film festival season

As we discover each September, autumn is the season for all of our senses.

The feel of cooler temperatures after a long summer. A warm, visually pleasing palate of reds, oranges and browns. The taste of pumpkin spice in everything.

The sound of crunching leaves underfoot.

The smell of woodsmoke.

Like spring, autumn is a season of transition, a reminder of the value of change, in this case from a bright, buzzing, verdant summer of picnics in the park, towards the darker, quieter, more redolent calm of autumn and winter. It’s a journey inward; first experiential, then intellectual, delving into the collective unconscious.

“Autumn light is the loveliest light there is,” wrote author Margaret Renkl. “Soft, forgiving, it makes all the world an illuminated dream.”

In a cinephile’s world, dreams come to the fore in the fall through the release of films which will take on Oscar importance in the winter season to come.

Telluride, Venice, Toronto, New York each early autumn introduce the films which will fill our film consciousness over the many months yet to come.

The first of the important later summer film festivals occurs amidst the mountain landscape of Telluride, Colorado, which locale will be overrun with cinéastes over September’s Labour Day weekend, where prestige filmmakers ranging from Canada’s Sarah Polley (Women Talking), Luca Guadagnino (Bones and All), Sam Mendes (Empire of Light), Alejandro G. Inarritu (Bardo), Todd Field (TÁR), Sebastian Leilo (The Wonder), and Scott Cooper (The Pale Blue Eye) are set to garner the most buzz among the film cognoscenti, each of these filmmakers recipients of much past Oscar glory, each film highly anticipated, each film Oscar bound.

Overlapping the Telluride Film Festival is the 79th annual Venice International Film Festival, the Biennale Cinema, which will run from Wednesday, August 31 thru Saturday, September 10, where many of the films débuting at Telluride stateside will also feature in the star-studded Venice locale.

The big buzz film in Venice this year is White Noise, Noah Baumbach’s first film since Marriage Story. White Noise is a zany adaptation of Don DeLillo’s seminal novel about a Hitler Studies professor (Adam Driver) and his beleaguered wife (Greta Gerwig) whose lives are threatened by a toxic event.

Also at Venice: Andrew Dominik’s evocative drama Blonde, starring Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe, who disappears into the role as she struggles to cope under the glare of the spotlight. Add Bobby Cannavale as her second husband, Joe DiMaggio; Adrien Brody as her third husband, Arthur Miller; meticulous production design & luminous cinematography, and you have a potential awards-season juggernaut, streaming on Netflix Sept. 28th.

Olivia Wilde’s psychological chiller, Don’t Worry Darling, sees Florence Pugh and Harry Styles embody a picture-perfect ’50s couple whose unbridled passion for one another turns to suspicion when the former begins to fear that something sinister lurks beneath their carefree existence. Prepare for jump scares, glorious interiors, and Chris Pine as the film’s menacing mastermind.


A TIFF programme screen capture of Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical film, The Fabelmans

As the Telluride and Venice festivals wrap, the film festival season focus will turn to a renewed Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), now in its 47th season, running from Thursday, September 8th through Sunday, September 18th, as TIFF marks a return to its pre-pandemic days of in-person screenings, after two scaled-down editions spent in hybrid mode the past couple of years.

The big buzz film débuting in Toronto this year is Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, which will have its world première at this fall’s TIFF, with the iconic Oscar-winning director attending TIFF for the first time ever.

A long-in-the-works semi-autobiographical film, The Fabelmans is described by producers as a “deeply personal portrait of 20th-century American childhood,” which focuses on a family based in post-Second World War-era Arizona, the film following the young Spielberg facsimile Sammy Fabelman (played by Gabriel LaBelle) as he grows up with his father (Paul Dano), mother (Michelle Williams) and uncle (Seth Rogen). After discovering a “shattering family secret,” Sammy dives into the wonder of cinema to cope and find a path forward.

With a screenplay by regular Spielberg collaborator Tony Kushner (Munich, Lincoln, and last year’s West Side Story), The Fabelmans is Spielberg’s latest shot at awards-season glory. The film’s première represents a huge coup for TIFF.

The New York Film Festival  has lined up titles from Kelly Reichardt, Claire Denis, Alice Diop, Joanna Hogg, and more for its Main Slate this year. Women directed or co-directed 13 of the 32 Main Slate films, amounting to about 41%.

The NYFF has returned to the city that never sleeps for its 60th year at the Lincoln Centre, which recently announced Laura Poitras’ new documentary, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, to serve as the festival’s Centerpiece film. A story about art, politics, addiction, and David v. Goliath battles, the documentary chronicles the life of photographer Nan Goldin and her fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for their role in the opioid epidemic.

Mia Hansen-Løve’s latest, the Léa Seydoux-starring romantic drama One Fine Morning, is also part of the Main Slate, as are Claire Denis’ Stars at Noon; Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up; Joanna Hogg’s The Eternal Daughter; Alice Diop’s Saint Omer; Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun; and Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage.

Another Oscar bound film? Clemency director Chinonye Chukwu’s Till, a biopic about the lynching of Emmett Till, and his mother’s pursuit of justice.

As has been the case since it’s inception 41 years ago, the NYFF runs in tandem with the Vancouver International Film Festival, our somewhat truncated festival set to run from from Thursday, September 29th through Sunday, October 9th.

The importance of festivals to culture and society cannot be underestimated, as they set about to provide empathetic insight into our often confusing world. Film festivals also provide the opportunity to switch off your everyday life, to become enmeshed in the lives of people from across the globe.