Bradford is pushing the province to make changes and improve elections.
Based on a brief from the Association of Municipal Managers, Clerks, and Treasurers of Ontario (AMCTO), council voted to call on the provincial government to update the Municipal Elections Act (MEA) to clarify rules, streamline processes, maintain public trust, and fend off interference and misinformation, during the Oct. 1 council meeting.
“Elections are much more than counting ballots and declaring a winner,” AMCTO said in their April brief.
The association goes on to explain that regulations are also spread across the Assessment Act and the Education Act, and that for municipal and school board elections, 2,842 municipal offices and 676 representatives are elected, leading to a “2.5-plus-year planning and implementation journey,” that can continue as long as a year or more after election day, “making election administration a complex endeavour.”
To that end, the association is calling on the province to update the MEA ahead of the 2026 election, by which time it will be 30 years old, and implement a regular review at least every four years.
In its full report, AMCTO offers 45 recommendations in three categories — strengthening trust and integrity, enhancing accountability and transparency while improving enforcement, and reducing complexity — each of which is further broken into first, second and long-term priorities.
The resolution calls on the province to update the MEA based on the priority recommendations before summer 2025, and rewrite the Act based on long-term recommendations ahead of 2030 elections.
Not only are those improvements intended to create a better system, but also hoped to reverse the trend of declining interest in elections.
AMCTO sees election participation — both for voters and candidates — as an indicator of democratic health, and note both being on the decline.
They report voter turnout at just 43 per cent following the 2014 election, which decreased another four per cent between elections in 2018 and 2022.
Meanwhile, they reference the Associations of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) who reported in 2022 that more positions were being acclaimed — meaning only one person ran — especially in smaller, rural municipalities.
Compared to 2018, AMO reported total acclamations increased 15 per cent, while acclamation for mayors and reeves increased 16 per cent.
They added that in 2022, 32 councils were entirely acclaimed, an increase of 23 per cent over 26 councils in 2018, but added all of those were in communities with populations of 10,000 or fewer in 2022.
The brief also highlights other ongoing trends, including the rise of misinformation.
“We are also keeping an eye on more subversive and potentially harmful trends including the spread of misinformation that threatens democratic institutions,” AMCTO said.
They referenced a report from the Canadian Election Misinformation Project, which reviewed the 2021 federal election and found an increasing difficulty in detecting what qualifies as misinformation and a continued distrust of democratic institutions by increasing segments of Canadians.
Council approved the motion without discussion.
