Prince George voters didn't quite turn out in droves during this year's civic elections.
After seeing a record high 17,621 in 2005 followed by a second-highest 16,918 in 2008, the number of eligible voters who cast ballots for the 2011 elections dropped to 15,266, the third-lowest on record since three-year terms were introduced seven elections ago.
In all, there were an estimated 53,000 eligible voters in the city, making for a scant 28.8 per cent turnout.
There was also some trouble getting the vote counted on Saturday night as it took nearly 45 minutes longer than the planned 9 p.m. goal for City Hall to issue the preliminary results.
City spokesman Mike Davis said there were no glitches, it just took longer than expected to verify the results.
"What had happened was the people at the polling stations were calling in, giving results over the telephone and then we wanted to verify that those results were the same as on the written printouts," Davis said.
A final count will be ready by 4 p.m. Wednesday, Davis said, and once that concludes, a debrief with both polling station electoral officers and the media will occur.
The 2005 election featured a tight race between Colin Kinsley, who was seeking his fourth term as mayor, edged out challenger Dan Rogers by 642 votes.
And in 2008, Rogers emerged the winner by a more decided 2,765 over Don Zurowski.
In his victory, Kinsley also gained 49.1 per cent of the popular vote while Rogers attracted 54.8 per cent in 2008. This time around, winner Shari Green earned 45.7 per cent and won by a 1,637-vote margin over Rogers.
The third highest turnout was in 16,514 in 1996 when Kinsley was first elected mayor in a race that featured two other high-profile candidates, Don Bassermann and Tom Steadman.
Fourth was in 1990 when 15,466 people voted. in the first election to see councils elected for three years. John Backhouse won the second of five terms as mayor that year defeating Steve Sintich by 8,283 votes.
In 2002, when Kinsley was challenged by the relatively unknown Michael Cavanagh, just 12,606 people voted. Second lowest was in 1999, when winner Kinsley's main challengers were Cavanagh and Eugene Fetterly, the count was 14,369.
GREEN NEARLY SWEEPS THE POLLS
Not only did Shari Green win Prince George's mayoral race by a significant margin, but she pretty much achieved a clean sweep on a poll-by-poll basis.
Green drew the most votes in all eight polls on Saturday although main challenger Dan Rogers emerged the front runner in the Nov. 9 and Nov. 16 advance voting opportunities. Green was tops in the Nov. 15 advance vote, in the special voting opportunity - for hospital patients - and mail-in votes.
