Filling out the ballot

So how do you actually vote?

Advance polls start in one week, on Saturday October 1. Advance polls are also open Wed Oct 5, Sat Oct 8, Tue Oct 11, Thu Oct 13. Election day is Saturday October 15. You can vote at any polling place (where to vote), and they're open 8 am to 8 pm.

Voting in provincial and federal elections is pretty easy: you figure out which party you support, then you go to the polling place and check the box against that party's candidate.

Voting in the municipal election is more difficult:

• There's a lot of parties, and most of them are new and unfamiliar. There's five parties running a mayoral candidate, and 10 parties running multiple council candidates.

• You can vote for up to 10 council candidates.

• There's 60 council candidates to choose from.

• The ballot is in random order. That way, people with alphabetically first or last names don't have an unfair advantage. But that means that even if you know who you want to vote for, finding them on the ballot isn't easy!

Voter turnout in 2018 was less than 40%, and my guess is that it was especially low for younger people and renters. So I'd like to make it as easy as possible. There's basically two steps:

• Deciding who to vote for.

• Filling out the ballot.

Deciding who to vote for: Wondering which parties to vote for this October? A concise review of current parties' voting records. Posted recently to Reddit, based on Justin McElroy's summary of key votes. There's also a 2022 Vancouver Election Guide by Allen Pike.

Filling out the ballot: here's a list of each party's council candidates (10 councillors), with their assigned number. If you want to vote for all the council candidates running with a particular party, here's the numbers you check.

• Forward Together (Kennedy Stewart): 104 Dulcy Anderson, 105 Tesicca Truong, 111 Alvin Singh, 146 Jeanette Ashe, 149 Hilary Brown, 155 Russil Wvong (six total)

• A Better City (Ken Sim): 103 Brian Montague, 113 Sarah Kirby-Yung, 119 Lenny Zhou, 126 Peter Meiszner, 131 Lisa Dominato, 132 Mike Klassen, 148 Rebecca Bligh (seven total)

• TEAM (Colleen Hardwick): 100 Sean Nardi, 127 Cleta Brown, 135 Stephen Roberts, 143 Grace Quan, 144 Param Nijjar, 147 Bill Tieleman (six total)

• Progress Vancouver (Mark Marissen): 102 Asha Hayer, 117 May He, 121 Morgane Oger, 142 Mauro Francis, 156 David Chin, 157 Marie Noelle Rosa (six total)

• NPA (Fred Harding): 116 Melissa De Genova, 134 Cinnamon Bhayani, 138 Ken Charko, 145 Elaine Allan, 150 Arezo Zarrabian, 158 Morning Lee (six total)

Parties without a mayoral candidate:

• Green: 114 Michael Wiebe, 122 Adriane Carr, 128 Devyani Singh, 141 Stephanie Smith, 151 Pete Fry (five total)

• OneCity: 112 Iona Bonamis, 125 Matthew Norris, 137 Ian Cromwell, 139 Christine Boyle (four total)

• COPE: 101 Breen Ouellette, 107 Nancy Trigueros, 118 Tanya Webking, 136 Jean Swanson (four total)

• Vision: 109 Stuart Mackinnon, 129 Lesli Boldt, 154 Honieh Barzagari (three total)

• VOTE Socialist: 108 Sean Orr

For completeness, here's the party-affiliated candidates for the parks board (seven commissioners):

• ABC: 200 Scott Jensen, 210 Marie-Claire Howard, 214 Laura Christensen, 216 Jas Virdi, 228 Brennan Bastyovanszky, 229 Angela Kate Haer

• TEAM: 208 Tricia Barker, 221 Kumi Kimura, 222 Kathleen Larsen, 223 Michelle Mollineaux, 225 James Buckshon, 227 Patrick Audley

• NPA: 205 Jason Upton, 219 Dehara September, 220 Olga Zarudina, 224 Dave Pasin

Parties running less than four candidates:

• OneCity: 209 Caitlin Stockwell, 213 Serena Jackson, 226 Tiyaltelut Kristen Rivers

• COPE: 201 Gwen Giesbrecht, 207 Chris Livingstone, 217 Maira Hassan

• Green: 203 Tom Digby, 215 Tricia Riley

• Vision Vancouver: 204 Carla Frenkel, 212 John Irwin

• VOTE Socialist: 206 Andrea Pinochet-Escudero

Candidates for school board (nine trustees):

• NPA - 301 Aaron Fedora, 311 Rahul Aggarwal, 319 Ashley Vaughan, 321 Nadine Goodine, 325 Milan Kljajic

• OneCity - 317 Krista Sigurdson, 318 Kyla Epstein, 320 Jennifer Reddy, 322 Gavin Somers, 323 Rory Brown

• Vision Vancouver - 303 Hilary Thomson, 306 Aaron Leung, 312 Kera McArthur, 326 Steve Cardwell, 329 Allan Wong

Parties running fewer than five candidates:

• ABC - 300 Christopher JK Richardson, 313 Alfred Chien, 314 Preeti Faridkot, 316 Victoria Jung, 328 Josh Zhang

• Green - 302 Lois Chan-Pedley, 315 Janet Fraser, 327 Nick Poppell

• COPE - 304 Suzie Mah, 310 Rocco Trigueros

• TEAM - 330 Matiul Alam

• VOTE Socialist - 307 Karina Zeidler

More information:

• 2022 Election website from the city of Vancouver

• Official order of candidates’ names on the ballot

[Disclaimer: I'm running for city council with Forward Together: Vancouver Needs More Housing. I've tried to keep the information above as objective and non-partisan as possible. If I've left anyone out or misspelled anyone's name, my apologies!]

[Update: ABC has dropped Christopher Richardson.]

Originally posted to Reddit.