Election signs may be annoying, but they serve a purpose – and current local governments want to suppress their use.
Many of the municipalities in the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley regions have severely limited or out-right banned election lawn signs from Public property.
I’ll get into how we got there in a moment.
But, why does it matter?
Having run in previous elections, I have dozens (hundreds?) of election lawn signs in my basement, waiting for the opportunity to spring back up in public and remind those driving by them that I am indeed an option on the [insert current election here] ballot. Studies have shown that putting up election signs does not necessarily aid the candidate’s result who put the sign up, but does have a correlation with increasing general voter turnout.
Langley political narrator Brad Richert pointed out that after the 2022 municipal election that most of the lowest vote-getting candidates had few – or zero – election signs.
But with the ban on signs on Public property, it may put a candidate at a disadvantage if:
- they don’t have a lot of time (working full-time congruently with the campaign)
- they have a smaller volunteer base (how many libertarians are there?)
- they don’t have resources (money talks)
Surrey was ground zero for eliminating election signs on Public property.
The City of Surrey is one of the 11 largest cities in Canada.
In 2018 the election lawn signs for the municipal civic local election were legal, and, uh, were kind of out of control.
They were everywhere.
On medians.
On Round-a-bouts.
At intersections.
Then, after that 2018 election the City of Surrey decided to enact a complete ban on election signs on Public property.The City of Langley already had their own restrictions, allowing only a few locations to be peppered by the colourful coroplast. Then, in 2022, they revoked that as well and joined Surrey with an all-out ban on Public property.
Then mayor Val van den Broek opposed that ban
“I think we’re impeding new candidates from coming forward,” she said.
The Township of Langley, where I live, caught up to their neighbours in 2023, ahead of the upcoming provincial election, and a year after the Contract With Langley party gained a majority in the Township of Langley (basically ensuring they can push through any bylaws they want). It’s interesting to note that the new mayor, Eric Woodward, actually was against a sign ban back when he was first elected to council.
Funny how things change once you’ve created a monopoly of governance.
In council there was some push-back against the proposed ban on Public signs from the two independent members present.
Michael Pratt said that the bylaw went too far and would damage the ability of a new candidate to get their name out there during elections.
“There’s a reason why it’s struck such a chord with me, and the residents I’ve discussed it with,” Pratt said.
While he realizes there are issues with signs creating more work for bylaw officers or being hazardous if put in unsafe places, he still felt the new law went too far. He argued that allowing only private homeowners the right to put up signs disadvantages poorer residents as well.
Fellow councilor Margaret Kunst, also against the motion, said she thought a ban on signs would favour incumbent councillors.
I agree.
She also brought up the fact that in 2022 the City of Langley already had very strict sign bylaws and they had extremely low turnout recently.
Let’s talk about that.
After the recent provincial election we saw that all the Langleys had similar voter turnout – Langley-Abbotsford, where I was a candidate, actually had the best at 58.8%
And, that’s even slightly higher than 2020’s snap Provincial election.
But, it’s lower than 2017 – when province-wide 61.2% of eligible voters cast a ballot.
Without getting too deep into the weeds, this 2024 B.C. Provincial election seemed to be trending towards a good turnout percentage. Almost 25% of eligible voters partook in Advanced Voting, smashing previous Advanced Voting marks.
This tells us it was a hotly-contested election with major issues drawing voters off their couches.
And still, only 58% voted?
There is a lot of pent-up negative energy surrounding Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party, so we may see the October 2025 election with decent turnout. We’ll see.
But we’ll also see in 2026 how the numbers shake down for our next local municipal elections…I think we’ll see incredibly soft voter turnout numbers.
