Impact of the Federal Election on the Local Elections

I am worried about what sort of impact the pending federal election will have on the local elections in BC.

Realistically anyone making a run for local office needs to work from labour day to election day on their campaign. They need the next four weeks to get volunteers, money and shake hands. All three of these will be severly impacted by a federal election campaign.

Politically active people will be working on the federal campaign and generally not be available for the local elections. If the election is on October 14th, it is not realistic to expect a lot of the people that worked on the federal campaign to immediately work on the municipal one. People are going to want to take a break for a few weeks and that will make them unavailable for the local campaign.

Money also becomes an issue. Running for office in Victoria and Saanich takes serious money, new candidates in smaller municipalities will also have to spend several thousand dollars simply to become known.Unless a candidate is going only to spend their own money, this is not that much of an issue. For people that can not afford to spend $15 000 of their own money, they are going to have real trouble raising this when they have been tapped out by the federal election.

The most realistic result is that the best known candidates will get elected and voter turn out will be lower than last time.