Advance voting shows 25 per cent jump over last election
Posted May 12, 2013 6:09 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – More people in BC chose to cast ballots early in this provincial election. Advance voting numbers suggest an upward trend over the last election.
Don Main with Elections BC says so far three out of the four days have been counted and point to a big jump.
“For the first three days of advance voting, 269,707 people have taken advantage of advance voting opportunities. That’s a difference of about almost 54,000 which is about a 25 per cent increase over 2009.”
He says the reasons for the uptick include better awareness and advanced technology.
“I’d like to think it’s part of Elections BC’s public awareness campaign. We have, through this complete campaign period, let British Columbians know about their opportunities to participate in the provincial electoral process. We’ve been using social media and getting messages out that way and responding to people. We also have a Vote BC app that allows people to find their closest voting place so that we can make it as accessible as possible,” Main explains.
Once Saturday’s turnout is accounted for, he predicts numbers to remain higher than four years ago. “Generally, on the Saturday we see the same sort of numbers that we saw on the first day, and this year we had almost 107,000 people turnout on the first day of advance voting.”
The advance polls closed Saturday.
Elections BC says 3.3 million people are eligible to vote in BC. General election day is on Tuesday.
