Photo by Nick Fonda
By Nick Fonda
Local Journalism Initiative
After beating out five other candidates and garnering 50.7 per cent of the vote, Kevin Stoddard is the new town councillor for Richmond’s District 5.
Voter turnout, as is generally the case in municipal elections, was low. Of the 455 eligible voters in the district, only 136 cast their ballots, a turnout rate of 29.89 per cent.
In a few ways, this byelection was rather unusual.
Although it also happened in neighbouring Melbourne Township, it’s unusual to have several candidates contesting a seat in a municipal byelection. Often, candidates are elected by acclamation. As CBC reported, several towns of under 2,000 in population will likely take advantage of recent provincial legislation which, starting after 2025, will permit them to function with four councillors rather than six, which is now the norm.
It was also a byelection in which one issue was very fresh in the minds of the electorate: water. A broken water pump caused tap water in a significant number of households in Richmond to run brown for several weeks earlier in the summer.
Compared to the election campaign being waged south of the border, campaign spending in the District 5 byelection was very modest. Unlike in the neighbouring republic, where billions of dollars are being spent on election ads, Quebec law imposes limits on the sums spent on municipal elections. For the election of a municipal councillor in towns of over 5,000, the maximum base amount for election expenses is $1,890. This amount is increased by $0.30 per person entered on the electoral list of the district in which that person is a candidate.
Ironically, but understandably, there are no spending limits in towns of under 5,000, and the District 5 candidates—had they been backed by someone like Elon Musk—could have spent like drunken sailors, or presidential candidates.
As it was, only one candidate went to the trouble and expense of printing election posters and pasting them on telephone poles and improvised billboards. A couple of the candidates took the time to type up a page-long handout that they gave to homeowners as they walked door-to-door to meet voters.
In the end, the campaign posters failed almost completely to sway the citizens of District 5. Raymond De Martin, who has lived in Richmond for six years, although not in District 5, got only two votes, despite his poster campaign.
Nicolas Isabelle, the only one of the six candidates who, by his own choice, was not interviewed by the Record prior to the election, was second-to-last with four votes.
Yves Lupien, a lifetime resident of Richmond who had first-hand experience with brown tap water last summer, garnered six votes, while Pierre Bédard, who lives in District 5, but has only been in Richmond for four years, won seven votes.
The runner-up in the byelection was Benoit Saint-Pierre, who got 48 votes, which is 35 per cent of the votes cast.
At the age of 32, Kevin Stoddard, who lives in District 5, was the youngest of the candidates. At least four of the other candidates are either retired or of retirement age. In addition to his full-time job as a mechanic, he is also a member of Richmond’s volunteer fire department.
At least four of the candidates, including Kevin Stoddard, had CVs which listed varying degrees of volunteer work in the community. Serving on council represents a small financial step forward as town councillors are not, strictly speaking, volunteers since they are paid about $6,000 per annum.
Interestingly, seen in the context of different democratic electoral systems, although Kevin Stoddard won under the first-past-the-post system, with just over 50 per cent of the vote, he would also have won the byelection if it had been held under rank voting or any other proportional representation system.
“I was pleasantly surprised by the results of the election,” he says. “I expected to be in the running but it wasn’t until the votes were being tabulated that I realized I might win.”
Kevin is likely to be kept busy as a councillor. Even in the weeks before the election, he was being approached by citizens who had particular problems and concerns.