Municipal and provincial election signs popping up beside each other all over the province may be adding to confusion for B.C. voters. With two elections just one week apart, the public is being asked to keep track of two sets of candidates and two different election days. “It’s confusing,” one voter admitted to CTV News. Signs for mayors, councillors and school board candidates are appearing alongside signs for the provincial election. And in some areas, they’re all jumbled together. “You vote for this one on Oct. 17, and this one on the 24th,” another voter said with a chuckle. Political parties have been busy trying to clarify the two dates and the two elections. “Be careful, and be sure of what you’re voting for,” said one campaign representative. For people heading to the polls for the first time, the sheer number of signs may make it difficult to know where to begin. “I feel like people that are just starting out with voting, I feel like it can be difficult to see where to turn or where to start,” said another voter. University of the Fraser Valley’s Hamish Telford told CTV News that B.C. also doesn’t have the same culture of putting campaign signs on front lawns as some other provinces. “So I think that’s why we see signs clustered in particular places where they’re allowed to put signs up, because people are just not sort of populating the signs on their front lawn or on their apartment balconies,” said the political science professor. The municipal election is Oct. 17, and the provincial election is Oct. 24.
