Political watcher says voters turned off by local election antics

A leading political watcher says the recent meddling in Kitchener’s ward 2 is a turn-off for voters.

Last week, ward 2 city council candidate Wasai Rahimi received an e-mail in which Kitchener mayoral candidate Dan Glenn-Graham urged him to withdraw from the race and support another ward 2 candidate.  Glenn-Graham has said he did not send the e-mail to Rahimi, and has since apologized.

Bob Williams, professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo, told ‘570 News Mid-Day with Eric Drozd’ voters become disengaged by such incidents.  “There will be a lot of people who would find that whole thing inappropriate.  That would not encourage them to want to participate in the process.”

Williams says the truth about what happened may never be known.  “We’ll never find out, certainly before election day what really happened and so people will probably just say ‘it’s just people playing games and I’m not interested in people playing games’.

Williams adds as the campaign winds down, candidates have a real challenge to attract voters’ attention.  “It’s a long grind to get to election day, surprisingly, and staying interested enough through that whole period, they just want it over with.”

Williams says as the campaign winds down, even some of the candidates struggle to maintain their enthusiasm.

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