Two new school trustees will join four incumbents to make up the Prince Rupert School District 52 board for the next four years.
When P.R. voters went to the polls on Oct. 15, they had to select six out of seven possible candidates for the position of school trustee, and they decided to keep on all four incumbent candidates.
The City of Prince Rupert’s chief election officer announced the official outcome of the election on Oct. 19, however it did not differ from the results declared the evening of the election.
Kate Toye received the most votes at 1,972, followed by Michael Pucci with 1,535, Kristy Maier with 1,498, James Horne with 1,487, Louisa Sanchez with 1,282 and Danielle Dalton with 1,264.
This will be Pucci and Dalton’s first terms.
Stephanie Watkins received 1,178 votes, just shy of the number required to get her a seat on the board.
In total 2,888 residents cast a ballot in the municipal and school board elections, out of 9,360 eligible voters which is a 31 per cent turnout.
CIVIX, a national non-profit, is attempting to strengthen our country’s democracy by educating citizens before they can legally vote, while they are still in school through the Student Vote program.
Students from Charles Hays Secondary School, Pacific Coast School, Pineridge Elementary School, Prince Rupert Middle School and Roosevelt Park Elementary School voted on the actual candidates for the school board and city through the Student Vote program.
“We believe that the best way to support students in developing citizenship skills is for them to experience their democracy first hand,” the CIVIX Student Vote website states.
Interestingly, the students’ top three choices for school trustee perfectly reflected those from the actual election, with Toye earning the most votes followed by Pucci and Maier.
However, in the students’ mock election Watkins was elected and it was Sanchez who garnered the fewest votes.
With respect to municipal elections, the students had a very different choice for mayor than those who voted in the actual election.
In the student election, Jason Hoang won the most votes, at 168, followed by Chrystopher Thompson with 137 votes, Herb Pond with 85 votes and Stephen Fitzpatrick with 29 votes.
In the actual election Pond won with 1,486 votes, followed by Thompson with 885, Hoang with 396 and Fitzpatrick with 69.
The results for councillors were similar between the students’ mock election and the actual election results, however, in the students’ election Andy Chugh, the youngest candidate was elected and in the official election he was not.