On October 26nd, 2026, are the Ontario municipal elections, including here in Waterloo Region. Representatives for three areas of government will be elected:
There is an easy to understand voter’s guide for the Ontario municipal election published by the province: 2026 Voters’ Guide.
There is an easier to understand summary published by settlement.org.
Your municipal government is responsible for many of the services that directly impact your daily life. We’ve put together a separate page with information to explain the roles and responsibilities of the different positions.
Here are some reasons to care about voting in municipal elections:
The Region of Waterloo has also created a series of videos in which local voters explain their reasons to vote.
In provincial and federal elections, you effectively have to make one decision: how to cast one vote in one local riding. You can do this by selecting the party leader you like, or the party you like, or maybe the local candidate you like best. The parties publish policy statements and there is lots of provincial and national news coverage.
Muncipal elections are more complicated, because you have to make more decisions:
Although municipal elections are more complicated than federal and provincial ones, they are manageable if you break them down step by step.
You may vote if you are a Canadian citizen who resides in Waterloo Region, owns property here, or has a spouse who owns property here. You must also be on the voter’s list.
There are some exceptions to these guidelines that may prohibit you from voting. There are also situations where you may vote in more than one municipal election.
[NEED LINK TO THE EXCEPTIONS]
Elections Ontario maintains an online tool for checking your voter registration at https://vreg.registertovoteon.ca/en/home. This is the place to start. You can also update your voter information at that site.
For more information about how to vote, see the Registering on the Voters’ List page.
Elections Ontario maintains the voter list for both the Provincial and Municipal elections, so it is possible you are already registered to vote based on your registration for the Provincial election. You can check on the voter registration website https://vreg.registertovoteon.ca/en/home to see what municipality you may be registered to vote in already.
Yes. Depending on where your home address is, you may be eligible to vote twice! See the Ontario 2022 Voters’ Guide for more information.
Yes. Your voting address is considered to be the place where you ate or slept most frequently during the last five weeks.
This depends on the township or city in which you live. Different municipalities have different procedures. For the 2022 election, CBC Kitchener-Waterloo has published a comprehensive guide. Below is a summary and links to official municipality information:
If your township or city allows voting in person then you do not need a voter card. If your township or city allows only Internet and telephone voting then you will need a PIN, which is ordinarily mailed to you.
In general you need to bring identification with you in order to vote. The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing publishes a list of acceptable documents for voter identification.
If you do not have identification you may still vote, but you must be registered on the voter’s list and you must sign a declaration of your identity. See the voters’ and identification section of the 2026 Voters’ Guide for more information.
No. You may refrain from voting for some positions if you wish; your vote will count for the positions you did vote for.
Similarly, if a position elects more than one representative (for example, there are four Kitchener Regional Council representatives) then you are not obligated to cast four votes for that position.
See our Municipal Government Overview for an explanation of the different positions and their responsibilities.
Everybody who is eligible to vote is assigned to a school board. By default this is the English public school board (WRDSB).
For more information, see our page containing information about school board elections.
Local media provides lots of election coverage. Here are a few hubs:
On Twitter you can track the #wrvotes and #wrpoli hashtags.
Unlike provincial or federal politics, municipal candidates in our municipality do not run under party banners.
This has the advantage of potentially reducing partisanship, but it means that candidates must be evaluated on their individual merits.
Voter turnout tends to be significantly lower than for provincial or federal elections. For the 2018 election, the Region of Waterloo published results indicating that overall turnout was 31%, ranging from a low of 29.7% in Cambridge to a high of 40.5% in Wilmot township.
In 2014, they ranged from a low of 29.3% in Wellesley township to a high of 40.6% in Wilmot township.
Voter turnout in provincial and federal elections tends to be much higher. Overall turnout for the 2021 federal election was 62%, and in the 2022 Ontario provincial election was 45%. These turnout numbers were much lower than previous federal and provincial elections, but still were much higher than municipal ones.
[NEED TO UPDATE WITH 2022 RESULTS]
If there are not enough all-candidates meetings for the positions that interest you (spoiler: there probably aren’t) then you can organize your own. This is not difficult, but does take some time and planning.
The City of Toronto had a guide to ward all-candidates meetings. This was written pre-pandemic, and contains some Toronto-specific information, but remains a good guide to the structure of an all-candidates meeting.
Some of the volunteers on this website also have experience in organizing all-candidates meetings, and would be happy to offer guidance. Contact us using the email at the bottom of this page.
Once you have started organizing your meeting, be sure to let us know about it so we can publish it on this website!
Bob Jonkman posts a candidate listing on his poliblog site. We use his data in our candidate listings – thanks, Bob!
Melissa Bowman publishes a blog about urban issues and local politics at https://citified.substack.com/ . Although the blog is relatively even-handed the blog reflects Bowman’s own views.
The Region of Waterloo links to election information for the different municipalities at https://wrvotes.com .
A group called the Waterloo Region Women’s Municipal Campaign School held workshops on how to run for political office. Several election candidates during this election credit the campaign school for inspiring them to run for office. They have a Twitter account here: @wrwomenrun.
There is a related initiative called The Kitchen Cabinet which aims to support women, trans and non-binary candidates in the election.
For a Better Waterloo Region is largely an advocacy group for progressive causes, but did hold one information meeting for potential candidates.
Official candidate listing pages are listed on https://wrvotes.com . For convenience, here they are again: