By Cheryl Jahn

Election Process Comes To An End

Jan 18, 2019 | 2:03 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Today is the deadline for candidates in last fall’s civic election to file the financial documents, officially closing a process that began on September 4th, when the nomination period started. In BC, the requirements for nomination are established by the Community Charter. It sets out that a candidate must have no fewer than two people to nominate them. After that, municipalities can add their own requirements. Nanaimo and Kelowna, for example, require their candidates to have no fewer than ten people nominate them and to pay $100. Kamloops requires ten nominators but charges no fee. Prince George only requires two nominators and that’s it. 

“We want to encourage people to seek political office that represents a broad socio-economic background. The challenge can be that there are significant barriers to enter politics that will deter people from lower income from doing so,” says UNBC Political Scientist Jason Morris. “For the most part, the barriers are pretty minimal and if somebody can come up with a few friends to sign a form and maybe a hundred or two hundred bucks, they might now be able to run for office anyways.”

On the flip side, he says there is nothing stopping a wealthy, yet frivolous, candidate from running. 

Councillor Brian Skakun has filed nomination papers six times and he says it may be time to tweak the process.

“I don’t think it would hurt,” he says. “If you’re going to be serious when you’re running for City Council or Mayor, it would be good to have a number of people nominate you and, perhaps, a fee. You know, you get the deposit back after the elecition to make sure you’re serious as well. But I think we can definitely tune it up.”

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