By Cheryl Jahn

New nomination rules for civic election

Aug 17, 2022 | 2:05 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – With campaigning officially underway and the nomination period opening soon for the upcoming civic election, some changes are now in place around the nomination process. For instance, there is now a $100, refundable, deposit where there wasn’t one before. Chief Electoral Officer Maureen Connelly says some of the changes put Prince George on par with other communities.

“Many of our local peers, both municipalities and regional districts have an increased nominators as well as a nomination deposit.”

The number of required nominations – those who endorse a candidate – has risen from two to ten, something Connelly believes better reflects the seriousness of the process.

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“I kind of see both the increase in the number of nominators as well as the nomination deposit as sort formalizing the process or creating more formality around it,” she says. “Just conveying the importance or the seriousness of putting forward nomination documents to run for a position on Council.”

Probably one of the most significant changes that will be presented for this election is the mail-in ballots. No longer are they restricted to those who are unable to make it to a polling station.

“I think the province, moving forward with the uncertainty of pandemic and perhaps it worked really well with the by-elections that were held in the past two years, that they would open it up to all electors. So it is a big change.”

And City is hiring a host of folks to work the election and lots of them.

“We’ve got eight voting locations on general voting day. We’ve got four advanced polling dates so we need quite a few staff. We had nearly two hundred, I believe, in 2018.”

If you are interested, the City is taking applications until the end of this month.