Editorial: And My Bold Prediction on the Ultimate Victor Tonight.

Tonight, as ballots are counted across Alberta’s cities, towns, and counties, one candidate stands out as the sure-fire victor — though you won’t find their name printed anywhere on the ballot.

That candidate is neither the polished mayoral hopeful nor the tireless community advocate, neither the entrenched incumbent nor the bright-eyed newcomer promising change.

No, the winner of tonight’s Alberta municipal elections will be that familiar, quiet figure who never campaigns and never concedes: “Mr. Apathy.” Or, if you prefer, “None of the Above.”

It’s not pessimism to say that apathy will win tonight — it’s practicality. In 2021, the province saw a turnout rate of just 37 percent in its municipal elections. That means nearly two-thirds of eligible voters simply didn’t show up.

Of Alberta’s 2,887,682 eligible voters, just over one million took the time to cast a ballot. This year, there’s little reason to believe we’ll do better. In fact, early reports suggest things might be worse.

In Lethbridge, for example, 2,832 people voted in the first four days of advance polls — 3.2 percent of the 88,647 eligible voters. That’s down from the 3,950 early ballots cast during the same period in 2021. In Edmonton, advance polls were open for five days this year, from October 7 to 11, and 41,340 people voted — an average of 8,268 per day, with turnout peaking at just under 11,000 on the final day. Four years ago, Edmonton ran advance polls for twice as long, over ten days, and saw 63,834 votes. Calgary’s numbers tell a similar story: 96,549 advance ballots over six days, representing 10.7 percent of eligible voters. In 2021, during a pandemic, 141,329 Calgarians voted early.

Only in Grande Prairie did the trend go the other way, with 2,991 advance votes this year, up slightly from 2,633 in 2021.

So, if the early numbers are any indication, the “winner” is already clear. The real story of this election is not about who becomes mayor or reeve or councillor, but how few Albertans take part in choosing them. The closest level of government to the people is once again the one most neglected by them. Tonight, if Alberta reaches that same 37 percent turnout as 2021, it will be described as a victory — not for democracy, but for Mr. Apathy.

And that’s the problem.

When the bar for civic participation has fallen so low that barely one in three voters showing up is considered a success, something has gone fundamentally wrong. Local government is supposed to be the level that touches our daily lives most directly — the one that decides how our streets are maintained, where parks are built, how property taxes are spent, and how communities grow.

Yet it remains the one most overlooked, most underreported, and most ignored. It’s the place where our influence is most direct, but our interest least engaged.

Apathy doesn’t win through effort. It wins through absence. It wins because we stay home. After all, we shrug. After all, we assume that someone else will do the voting for us. It’s not a protest vote or a principled abstention; it’s a quiet surrender.

When few voters show up, the legitimacy of local government suffers. Councils become representative of the motivated minority, not the general public. The result is a distorted reflection of the community — decisions made by default rather than design.

This is how apathy governs: by omission. With fewer people paying attention, candidates have to appeal to fewer voices. A smaller pool of voters means campaigns can focus narrowly on small but reliable constituencies — business owners, neighbourhood associations, partisan groups — rather than the broader population.

The fewer people who vote, the smaller the mandate. And yet, when the results come in, we call it democracy.

Why does this keep happening? Some of it comes down to visibility. Municipal elections don’t get the attention that provincial or federal races do. There’s less media coverage, fewer debates broadcast on television, fewer yard signs that spark conversation. Many voters simply don’t know who’s running, what the issues are, or even when election day takes place. Without the spotlight of national attention, civic elections fade into the background noise of daily life.

There’s also the problem of perception. For many, municipal government feels small — almost invisible — compared to the drama of higher levels of politics. People feel that local decisions are bureaucratic, technical, and even boring. There’s no ideological showdown, no big-party narrative, no sense of personal stakes.

But this view misses the truth that your city council probably affects your life more directly than Parliament ever will. It’s your council that decides how quickly snow is cleared, where a school zone begins, how much you pay in local taxes, or whether that empty lot near your home becomes a playground or a parking lot.

Apathy is also self-reinforcing. When turnout drops, expectations drop with it. Politicians, media, and citizens alike start to treat low participation as normal. If 30 or 35 percent turnout is seen as acceptable, why push harder? The system adjusts to the complacency, and complacency becomes the system.

So tonight, as the ballots are counted and winners declared, the headlines will focus on who got the most votes. But the real story will be buried in the turnout figures — how many didn’t bother to vote at all. For every town and every city where less than half the electorate participated, the real winner will be Mr. Apathy.

Policies become cautious, incremental, or shaped by narrow interests rather than the common good. Councils become more risk-averse, more inward-looking, less imaginative. Citizens grow disconnected, feeling as though decisions are made without them — which, of course, they are. And so, they tune out further, completing the cycle of disengagement.

It’s tempting to shrug this off as inevitable, a modern fact of life. People are busy. Politics feels remote. But it doesn’t have to be this way. When people understand that local elections are where their voice carries furthest, turnout can rise. When candidates make clear connections between their platforms and everyday concerns — property taxes, community safety, infrastructure — people notice. When councils engage young people, when schools teach local civics, when communities make voting visible and easy, participation can improve.

But it takes effort, and it takes a belief that effort matters. The truth is, Mr. Apathy wins not because he’s powerful, but because we let him. His strength lies in our collective willingness to accept low expectations. We talk about democratic decline as if it’s an external force, when in fact it’s an accumulation of small, individual choices — the decision to stay home, to not learn about the candidates, to not talk about the issues, to not care.

When we say that 37 percent turnout is “good,” we’re really saying that democracy only needs one in three people to function.

That’s not good enough. If we keep setting the bar that low, we’ll keep getting the same results: a handful of engaged citizens making decisions for everyone else, and a growing majority who don’t see themselves in their own local government.

So tonight, as results trickle in from across Alberta, let’s remember who really holds the power. It’s not just the mayor-elect or the councillor with the most votes. It’s the people who didn’t show up — the silent majority who stayed home.

Unless Albertans change that pattern — unless we reclaim our municipal elections as something worth caring about — Mr. Apathy will keep winning.

Tomorrow morning, there will be new names in city halls and county offices across the province. But the real victor will be the same as it was four years ago, and four years before that.

The only way to defeat him is simple, but not easy: show up. Vote. Care. Because as long as we keep handing victory to “None of the Above,” we’ll keep getting exactly what we deserve — a government of the few, chosen by the few, for the many who couldn’t be bothered.