A person leaves a civic election polling station in Vancouver, B.C., on Oct. 15, 2022. The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck
The first day of advance voting in Vancouver’s municipal election saw nearly three times as many voters as the first day of the 2022 municipal election, data show.
A City of Vancouver spokesperson told The Epoch Times that preliminary results showed 21,824 people voted on the first day of advance voting on Oct. 3, compared with 7,380 people on the first day of advance voting in 2022. The spokesperson said this was a 196 percent increase and “the highest single-day advance voting turnout on record for a Vancouver election.”
In 2022, 65,127 people voted during the five advance voting days at 22 voting locations, the data showed.
The City of Vancouver’s website said requests for vote-by-mail packages reached more than 18,000 this year, up more than 70 percent from the 2022 Vancouver Election total of 10,523.
Meanwhile, 130 candidates are running in this year’s municipal election in Vancouver, compared to 137 in 2022, the spokesperson said.
Currently eight candidates are officially registered to run for mayor, including incumbent Ken Sim; Colleen Hardwick, a city councillor from 2018 to 2022; Pete Fry, a city councillor since 2018; Rebecca Bligh, a city councillor since 2018; Muhammad Ahmad, the chairman of the strategic advisory board at Alpharay Consulting; Amauri Caliman, who is running as an independent; Kareem Allam, a former political strategist who managed Sim’s 2022 campaign and served as his chief of staff; and Scott Gilbert, a political activist.
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