You don’t have to complete your voting ballot. No one will throw it out if you don’t fill out every section of the little piece of paper in your booth.
Municipal elections are very different from provincial or federal elections.
When higher levels of government go to the polls, we typically have exactly one mark to make on the ballot. Whether you pick based on party, or party leader, or local candidate, you get one choice and only one.
But with municipal elections, it’s quite a smorgasbord.
In Langley City, you can pick from two mayoral candidates and up to six out of 14 council candidates. (The two school trustee candidates have been acclaimed to office.)
In the Township, there are four mayoral candidates, 28 people running for the eight council seats, and 10 school trustee candidates running for five seats.
This may be overwhelming.
One way to make it more bite-sized is to think of it as choosing a list starting from your favourite candidate, and working your way down.
If you read through our 10 Questions feature and see the longer answers by the candidates, there may be one or two candidates who stood out.
If you go through the list of candidates, and you find you only want to vote for a few names instead of eight for Township council, that’s fine.
You can vote for mayor and leave the rest of the ballot blank. You can just vote for school board trustees and ignore council if that’s your choice.
We always encourage people to vote.
But that doesn’t mean the ballot is a challenge, beaten by filling out all the slots.
And remember – democracy is also being engaged in the community after election day. No matter who wins, they’re accountable to the voters.
READ ALSO: GRID: Langley Township candidates answer series of questions
READ ALSO: GRID: Langley City candidates answer series of questions
READ ALSO: GRID: Langley school trustee candidates answer series of questions
– M.C.