Whitehorse, YT – It’s official. Yukoners head to the polls on November 3.
In Carcross today, Premier Mike Pemberton says he’ll call the territorial election on Friday, October 3. The election needed to be called by that date to allow political parties to campaign for 31 days ahead of the vote.
“We had some critical work, government work, that needed to be done, and we wanted to make sure that that was all done before the call for the election,” said Pemberton.
The Yukon Liberal Party is entering the campaign with a largely new team after every sitting minister announced they will not seek re-election. Premier Pemberton is optimistic that the new team can secure another Liberal mandate.
“This is fresh eyes, fresh ideas under the ideology of Liberal where we welcome everyone and we grow together,” said Pemberton. “I’m very, very confident.”
Premier Mike Pemberton took on the leadership role in June after former Premier Ranj Pillai stepped down to spend more time with family.
Both the Yukon NDP and Yukon Party have already been active with policy announcements in the build-up to today’s announcement.
This election also marks the first time in over a century that Yukon will hold a plebiscite alongside the territorial election. Voters will have a choice of whether to ditch first-past-the-post in favour of a ranked ballot electoral system.
Chief Electoral Officer Maxwell Harvey told CKRW that this election will be a historic one and public interest in the plebiscite is growing.
“Now that the parties are really starting to campaign, and the tempo is going up, and people are a bit more in the mindset now, okay, summer’s over, getting ready for the elections and such that we expect it to increase quite a bit,” said Harvey.
This is also the first territorial election after the number of ridings increased from 19 to 21 and several electoral boundaries were redrawn. Voters are being encouraged to double-check thier riding and register to vote early.
