Vancouver's byelection a story of big lines, big passion, and ABC coping with a big loss

No matter your political stripes, you could be happy about one thing late Saturday night: plenty of Vancouver citizens care deeply about exercising their right to vote.

From Point Grey in the west to Britannia in the east, from Sunset in the south to Kitsilano in the north, people waited for up to three hours to vote in a byelection that was not going to change the balance of power at city hall.

It meant plenty of frustration and lines that went around the corner of community centres even as polls were closing at 8 p.m., delaying the first voting results until 11 p.m. 

But it ended with two progressive candidates winning — OneCity's Lucy Maloney and COPE's Sean Orr. They replaced two other progressive councillors — OneCity's Christine Boyle and the Green Party's Adrianne Carr— who had resigned in recent months. 

And it ended with two separate stories: why were lineups so long, and why did the ruling ABC Vancouver Party lose?

'It kind of seems like we're cutting the costs'

On the lineup front, the biggest culprit was likely a decision quietly made three months ago with barely anyone noticing or raising a concern. 

"It kind of seems like we're cutting the costs," said Coun. Peter Meiszner during a Jan. 21 meeting, where a plan for the byelection proposed by staff was ultimately passed without dissent, with only Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung abstaining. 

Staff said because byelection turnout is typically low — 11 per cent in the city's most recent one in 2017 — they felt they could cut back on the number of polling stations, from 50 to 25, and number of workers in the field, from 631 to 265.

The overall budget for the byelection actually increased from 2017, from $1.5 million to $2 million. But those extra funds were put into new initiatives that staff thought were important, from a large mail-in ballot campaign, to better accessibility at polling stations, to more voting information cards in more languages. 

But staff never had to defend their reason for cutting election workers by 62 per cent, because councillors never pushed them on it during the meeting. 

And councillors never had to defend their decision to approve the plan, because none of the other parties made it a big election issue.

Given what transpired on Sunday, it's likely they will have to very soon.

ABC suffers byelection setback

Those lineups also told the story of who won the byelection. 

The most consistent reports of long lines throughout the day were in places like Mount Pleasant and Commercial Drive, neighbourhoods that typically vote for progressive parties in overwhelming numbers.

Earlier in the campaign, ABC Vancouver organizers showed confidence, telling CBC News they forecasted 16,000 of their supporters would head to the polls. 

But their final vote total was far smaller than that, as ABC followed the fate of plenty of other governing parties that struggled to motivate their supporters to the polls at the same level as those who opposed them. 

By 10 p.m. on Saturday night, an hour before votes began to be public, ABC concluded they had enough information to give concession speeches to a mostly-empty campaign office where the swagger was definitely muted.

Only 13 per cent of voters supported their candidates Jamie Stein and Ralph Kaisers, a low number even by the standards of governing parties in byelections with minimal stakes.  

"While the results tonight didn't go the way we hoped for, I want to be absolutely clear: we are all on team Vancouver, and we look forward to working with [Maloney] and [Orr]," said Sim. 

How they fit into council for the next 18 months bears watching. So too will One City and COPE's efforts to springboard from a successful byelection to the leading progressive choice in next year's general election.

That will be a long process. 

But it might end feeling a lot more action packed than the wait thousands of Vancouverites stuck through to cast their votes.