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Vancouver voters are flocking to advance polls, with some saying they were inspired to cast a ballot by the controversy over the current city council's decision to provide up to a $100-million loan to the developer of the Olympic athletes village.

Many surveyed at the city's advance polls on Saturday said the controversy didn't sway them from views they already had. Instead, it made them more determined to vote.

But some acknowledged that the news made them actually switch their vote, which could make the loan a deciding factor in what had been predicted to be a tight election.

Vancouver-born Alastair Livingstone, 74, said he shifted his vote after hearing the mayoral candidate for the current ruling party, the Non-Partisan Association, defend the secrecy around council's decision. Instead of voting for the NPA's Peter Ladner, he cast his ballot for Vision Vancouver's Gregor Robertson.

"This was an important issue for me," Mr. Livingstone said in an interview outside city hall. "One hundred-million dollars is not chicken feed."

He was not satisfied how Mr. Ladner responded to questions about the issue. "He refused to even discuss it on the radio, saying it was not public business, where the money went."

City councillors voted unanimously Oct. 14 to give city staff the power to loan Millennium Developments, the company building the city's $1.1-billion, 1,100-unit athletes village, or its lender, Fortress Investments, up to $100-million to cover construction-cost overruns.

Since then, Mr. Robertson has called repeatedly for more public discussion about the decision, while Mr. Ladner has said that it will damage the city's ability to negotiate a good deal if more information is revealed.

Over in the city's southeast sector, health-care worker Jeff Ryan said he had planned to vote for some NPA candidates, but that changed once the news broke about the Olympic village loan late last week.

"They're trying to pass it off as a mortgage, but it's not. They're underwriting a private company," said Mr. Ryan, who was voting mid-afternoon at Sunset Community Centre on Main Street. "I'm just suspicious of the lot that's in there now."

Candidates at the city's two main campaign parties acknowledged that recent news coverage has prompted some vote-switching and interest in the election that hadn't been there before. But they had sharply differing views about what mattered to people.

NPA Councillor Suzanne Anton said many people have told her that they decided not to vote for Mr. Robertson because of an earlier controversy heavily reported in the media last week, in which Mr. Robertson said he had refused to pay a $173 SkyTrain fine immediately, so that he could protest the unfairness of the amount on behalf of low-income transit riders in court.

"I've had way more people say to me 'I can't vote for that guy,' " Ms. Anton said. She said that on the Olympics issue, people have asked her for more information, but haven't said they would change their votes altogether.

Vision Vancouver council candidate Andrea Reimer acknowledged that some people of the many she met while campaigning on Commercial Drive Saturday brought up the issue of Mr. Robertson's fine. But she said the majority in the east-side neighbourhood were already planning to vote Vision because they supported its stand on homelessness; the Olympic-loan story helped to light a fire under them.

"Certainly their motivation to go out and vote increased."

However, Ms. Reimer said that motivation can go both ways. "I can't imagine that it's not also catalyzing NPA voters."

Almost 8,000 people have voted in the first two of the city's advance polls, held Wednesday and Saturday. That's only 1,000 less than voted in all four advance polls in the 2005 election.

Even though some of the increase can be attributed to an extra polling station and a switch in the rules to make advance-poll voting easier, the city's elections director, Paul Hancock, thinks the early numbers are a sign of what's to come.

"It's definitely a significant increase and it probably means we will have a larger turnout on election day than we did three years ago."

Frances Bula is a freelance

writer.