'It's disappointing': Islanders weigh in on why voter turnout dropped

A historically low percentage of eligible voters cast a ballot in the 2023 Prince Edward Island election, which many Island voters say is a big disappointment.

Unofficial results from Elections P.E.I. show a turnout of 68.5 per cent — including advance polls, mail-in ballots and regular election day voting — in the April 3 election that gave Dennis King's Progressive Conservatives a strong majority government.

That's the lowest turnout recorded in the history of the centralized voting agency, stretching back to 1966. The next lowest turnout was back in 2011, when 76.9 per cent of Islanders went to the polls to vote. 

"I think it's disappointing. I think people need to get out and take advantage of the democratic process," said voter Toby Hill. 

"There's no excuse not to have gone out. There were lots of advance polls, the weather's been good, so I'm really disappointed that more people didn't take advantage of the opportunity to express their opinion," she added. 

Julie Zhao, who immigrated to P.E.I. eight years ago, said she wanted to vote in the election but didn't receive her voter registration card in the mail and missed her chance to vote.

"Now I'm a Canadian. We are a very small group, I want to make a voice for our group to show what we want and we like," she said. 

Ben Miller, who cast his ballot on general voting day Monday, said traditionally P.E.I. has one of the highest voter turnout rates in Canada, so the numbers this year were a bit of a surprise. 

"This time around, I'm not sure. Maybe a lot of people figured it would be a PC majority or maybe they're just not as interested," he said. 

He also suggested it "might have been not going on the fixed election date in October." 

Snap election left little time to prepare

That's something staff at the P.E.I. Coalition for Women in Government agree could have kept more people from heading to the polls. King decided to not abide by the province's fixed-election legislation, which had set Oct. 2 as the date of the election.

"Lower than 70 per cent is not something we were anticipating," said Sarah Outram, a program coordinator with the coalition. "I think this tells us something about how important fixed election dates are." 

She said calling an early election tends to favour the party currently in power, and while all political parties on P.E.I. raced to campaign as widely as they could, the snap election left them little time to do that. That's something she said could have led to increasing voter apathy. 

Kari Kruse, another program coordinator with the coalition, said she's hearing from a number of voters who say they didn't feel well represented in this campaign — especially young people. 

"I do know that a lot of people were feeling disenfranchised and disillusioned by this election," she said. "I think youth were not super-involved in this election." 

Kruse said that while young people are becoming more politically engaged than in previous generations, they tend not to identify with particular party stripes but get involved over specific issues.

More youth engagement needed

Hannah Steeves agrees. 

She decided against voting in this election because she didn't feel she had enough information to make an informed choice. 

"Political education as to like, what the different parties are going for and what their goals actually mean for me, it didn't really help to influence me in any direction, so I didn't feel like it was worth me voting, if I wasn't educated on what I was voting for," Steeves said. 

The 18-year-old was eligible to vote for the first time on Monday, but feels more could have been done to make sure young people heard from parties about what their potential government would do for them. 

Maria Campeanu, who is also 18, did vote in the election and agrees more should be done to engage young people. 

"I know that a lot of people don't vote because they think it's just one number, it's not going to add too much to anything. But it does add up. That's why I was encouraged to vote," she said. 

"We're the generation of the future, we're the ones who are going to be making decisions later." 

Other first-time voters said they found the process fairly straightforward, but fear a drop in voter turnout will only lead to more apathy down the road. 

"It makes me feel that it will keep dropping and the community is less engaged," said student Yannick MacPhee. 

"We still have a choice for who we want to run our province," said student Jeremie Boutilier. "I still think it's important for Islanders to go and vote." 

A range of things for different people' 

Tim Garrity, P.E.I.'s chief electoral officer, said it's hard to understand why voter engagement changes from election to election, adding: "We always strive for 100 per cent turnout." 

He said there were 65 voting locations this time out, three advanced polling days, and more than 1,100 mail-in ballot applications sent out all over the world. 

"We do everything we can to make voting accessible, to make it easy for everybody to be able to cast their ballot. But then we really kind of pass the torch onto the voters themselves." 

While the spring election call could be a factor, he said, there's no way to know for sure. 

"Whatever the reason is — if people were just not engaged or a little bit tired over the past couple years — it's a little bit difficult to say exactly what it was because I think it would be a range of things for different people."