Range Lake tops the polls
Geography and issues, not personalities, drove campaign

by Ian Elliot
Northern News Services

NNSL (Oct 22/97) - Some waded into the issues, weighed the candidates' positions and marked their Xs boldly. Others held their noses and cast their ballots.

Either way, Yellowknife voters turned up in droves for Monday night's election.

A healthy 38 per cent of the city's voters -- 3,632 -- turned out to vote on Monday night, although that was lower than the record 44.7 per cent that voted in the last municipal election in 1994.

Voter turnout was heaviest in the city's populous Range Lake area, which accounted for a third of the vote and showed a bias of 370-261 towards incumbent Mayor Dave Lovell over challenger Matthew Grogono.

Yellowknife Centre, which voted at Mildred Hall school, was the second-busiest polling station, while Old Town, which voted largely at Sir John Franklin, was one of the only three polls where Grogono outpolled Lovell, 284-162.

Frame Lake South, which voted at William McDonald School; Kam Lake, which cast its ballots at Ecole St. Joseph; and School Draw, which voted at Weledeh School, rounded out the city voting.

A random sampling of voters outside three of the city's six polling stations Monday night indicated that voters looked more at the issues than at the candidates this election year.

"They're all the same," several people complained about the slate of five mayoral and 18 aldermanic candidates.

"We didn't have a great selection of people for mayor," said one man after casting his ballot at Ecole St. Joseph.

"But I always figured that if you don't vote, you can't complain."

"You couldn't tell a lot of the candidates from each other," said one woman outside Sir John Franklin, where much of Old Town voted.

Several people at that poll commented that the Woodyard and houseboat issues were of prime concern to them.

"I looked a lot at the issues and watched the forums," said one man.

"It took me a while, but I picked who I was going to vote for. Not a lot of incumbents, I'll tell you."

Other people cited issues such as the candidates' positions on a proposed new twin-pad arena or their stand on paying down the city's debt as the factor which brought them to the polling booth.

A number of voters admitted that when it came to the crunch, they cast their ballots based not on what the candidates said or published but on personal knowledge or dealing with them in the past.

"I voted for the five I knew personally," said one woman at Ecole St. Joseph, where another man joked. "It's better to vote for the evil you know than the evil you don't."

A number of people also said they were turned off by some negative aspects to the campaign, most notably an anonymous leaflet which slandered one of the mayoral hopefuls.

"I found that in particular really, really distasteful," said a woman who cast her vote at Mildred Hall. "It was kind of a low blow, I thought. If someone has something like that to say they should stand up and say it personally."