In response to the comment article A vote for Red Deer’s future, from the Oct. 22 Advocate, I would suggest that the opinion represented in the article has no factual basis.
Firstly, there are many reasons someone would not vote. They range from satisfaction (as stated in the article) to disinterest, apathy, or hopelessness.
One could look at the amount of new candidates and predict that because there were 25 options for change, compared with only five options to keep the status-quo, it was going to be almost impossible for an incumbent councillor to lose.
By looking at the numbers in your paper, I came to a different conclusion than you did.
Voting for an incumbent could be looked at as an endorsement of the status-quo.
Voting for a new candidate could mean that change is preferred.
By your numbers, the incumbents received 41,264 votes compared to 85,826 votes for the new candidates. In my mind, this shows that more voters were dissatisfied than satisfied.
Lucky for the incumbents that they had 25 opponents to confuse the issue.
Bruce Evans
Red Deer