As the local elections draw nearer, Livable CRD has released their candidate scorecard to help inform voters who are on the fence about who to vote for.
The scorecard was created to help voters navigate the dozens of candidates in some of the 13 municipalities that make up the Capital Regional District (CRD).
The candidate scorecard was developed by local volunteers and non-profit organizations, who created a questionnaire for candidates, with advocacy groups contributing questions in their respective fields.
The questionnaire was then sent out to all prospective candidates who could choose for themselves whether or not they wanted to fill it in.
Now, the completed questionnaires have been graded by the organizations that make up the Livable CRD coalition, and in total, 82 of 210 candidates in 12 of the CRD’s municipalities have had their questionnaires scored.
There were 128 candidates who chose not to complete the questionnaire.
“Municipal elections can be overwhelming, and figuring out where candidates stand can be difficult,” said Ray Oakley, a volunteer with Livable CRD.
“With 20+ candidates in some municipalities, and campaign platforms that can be difficult to interpret or compare, it can be challenging for voters to understand where candidates stand.”
Livable CRD says it does not endorse any candidates in the upcoming elections, but rather encourages voters to use the scorecard as one of many resources in their research to explore candidates’ positions before making their own decisions.
“Wouldn’t it be helpful to be able to compare all of the candidates in one place,” asked Michael Bassili, Livable CRD spokesperson.
“That’s the challenge we set out to address. Voters deserve a non-partisan resource that makes it easier for people to learn about the candidates and the issues that matter to them.”
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While the coalition itself claims non-partisanship, some of the organizations involved in creating and marking the questionnaire say that bias is inherent.
“For people who think it might be biased: of course we are biased—Better Transit organizes for more and better transit,” Caleb Crookes of Better Transit YYJ explained to Victoria Buzz.
“The goal of the questionnaire for us is to help voters that want to support better transit to identify the candidates [most] likely to accomplish that goal. Second, we will be holding local candidates accountable to their commitments.”
When looking at the scorecard, voters can see that candidates answered two comment-based sections that were not graded and received a letter grade in seven other categories, which include transit, housing, climate, arts, cycling, walking and governance.
Amongst the City of Victoria’s candidates, for example, one can see that seven of the 15 candidates who completed the questionnaire received “A” letter grades in all categories. Those candidates are Dave Thompson, Jack Sandor, Krista Loughton, Susan Kim, Peter Rose Gibbs, Matt Dell and Jeremy Caradonna.
Notably, 14 candidates running for office in Victoria did not fill out the questionnaire.
If a voter wants to know more about why a candidate received a specific letter grade, they can click on the candidate and see how they answered all questions.
Go to Livable CRD’s website to see the scorecard and explore how your municipality’s candidates answered the questions.
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