NANAIMO — While general voting day for the provincial election isn’t until Saturday, hundreds of ballots are set to be cast over the next few days at local elementary and secondary schools.
Student Vote, a nationwide campaign run by CIVIX, has partnered with 27 schools in the four ridings of Nanaimo-Gabriola, Nanaimo-Lantzville, Ladysmith-Oceanside, and Mid Island-Pacific Rim to provide educational materials on the voting process and help conduct mock elections.
Chief program officer Dan Allan said they’re looking to engage youth who cannot vote in the real election and begin creating habits early.
“The goal is to give them a chance to practice voting now…so that by the time they are 18, they’ll have the knowledge about how the process works and a practice run of casting their own vote. They can vote, and it’s not an unknown thing.”
Ballot boxes, ballots for specific ridings, and educational material are sent to classrooms who subscribe to the program, with classes typically spending a couple of weeks before an election going through specific coursework connected to the campaign.
CIVIX has operated Student Vote for every major local, provincial, and federal election since 2003, and the 2026 provincial election will mark their seventh B.C.-wide initiative.
For the Oct. 17 municipal election, students went three-for-three in Mayoral choices, joining eligible voters in preferring Leonard Krog, Mary Beil, and Adam Walker, but differed somewhat on their council appointments.
In Nanaimo, only two candidates (Sheryl Armstrong and Paul Manly) were chosen, both by area youth and eligible voters.
Allan said they’ve seen similar situations elsewhere.
“We have campaigns we have run where the youth elect almost the same as the adults did, and we’ve had campaigns where they haven’t lined up at all. Last spring, Canada-wide, adults voted for a Liberal government led by Mark Carney, but the youth we had taking part across Canada voted for Poilievre, so there aren’t really trends we can cast as a throughline exactly.”
He said they’re confident youth are going into their school elections informed about the process and the candidates and are not just picking names randomly on a ballot.
For the 2024 provincial Student Vote election, Sheila Malcolmson and George Andson won their Nanaimo-area ridings, while Josie Osborne also claimed Mid Island-Pacific Rim.
The only deviation was Conservative Brett Fee being preferred by youth over actual election winner Stephanie Higginson.
Results from Student Vote will be part of our provincial election night coverage on air and on NanaimoNewsNOW on Saturday, Oct. 24.
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