Author Archive

Edmonton Council Votes Down Online Voting for 2013

February 7, 2013 - By

For anyone who follows me on twitter, you know that one of the things I am most passionate about is the fight to stop online voting. Today I am not here to go through the reasons again – the information is out there, between MIT, the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), and other sources, there is much understanding of attacks, cryptography, and information security. However, I am here to comment on the decision yesterday by Edmonton’s City Council.

To the dismay of my cubicle buddies, I listened to the entire livestream of the Council Chambers. It was clear that most of the Councillors did not fully understand the technical elements of potential breaches, but had taken the time to talk to IT professionals who do. It was also clear that they had major reservations about the possibility of coercion of the vote, when not behind the safety of the screen in a polling station.

Now, due to my stance on the issue, I have been called everything from a fear-mongerer to a scam artist. I have been told that I am a threat to democracy, and that Edmonton’s City Council demonstrated a complete lack of leadership. On the other hand, this is [...]Read More

#YYCvote 9 months out

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January 12, 2013 - By

October 2013: Municipalities across Alberta will engage in civic elections, a process that until now was repeated every three years, although moving to four year terms hereinafter.

Every time I hear some politician talk about bringing social media into elections, I have to giggle a bit. The fact is, #yycvote, and its counterparts including #yegvote and #voteTO, were very active in 2010. Here’s a bit of a review of 2010, and what might be expected as social media becomes even more entrenched in our democratic process.

The Twitter

Between July 25, 2010 and October 19, 2010, 72,905 tweets were made with either the #yycvote or #yycvotes hashtags. 45,000 of those were original content, with another 27,000 RTs (or retweets – for those who aren’t familiar with twitter, it’s effectively copying content but acknowledging original poster(s)). Over 5,000 of those were between 9:00pm and 11:00pm on election night, as the count was coming in.

Over 4,000 unique individuals were talking about the election over twitter. This doesn’t seem like much – 0.4% of Calgary’s population, but it was active and though-provoking for those in there. Well, at least for awhile. We’ll get to that.

The number of tweets generally kept pace [...]Read More

In case you hadn’t heard…

March 26, 2012 - By

The electoral writ has dropped in Alberta. We will go to the polls on April 23rd.

… is this thing on? testing… 1… 2… 3…

March 22, 2012 - By

Hi folks. We’re back soon. We promise. Well, that’s assuming something of electoral interest happens in the coming days. You haven’t heard anything like that, have you? Maybe we’re just hearing things.

We’ll be back for the provincial election, letting you know the details of the ridings in Calgary. Stay tuned.

Jason

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January 12, 2012 - By

I don’t call a lot of people, “friend.”  The list of people who I consider to be friends is minimal, at best, and even then, the people who I would entrust most information to is an even smaller list.  Jason Letourneau was one of those friends.  His sudden passing on Tuesday hit me hard, as it has anyone who has had the privilege of calling him a friend.

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Jason Scott Letourneau. Jason was born with a major heart defect and through the generous donation of an anonymous family, Jason received the priceless gift of a new heart 18 years ago. Although 40 years of age, Jason thought of himself as just turning “18″ – old enough to vote. Jason worked hard to support those going through any type of hardship. He had been a spokesperson for the Organ Donation and Transplant Association of Canada and helped others whenever possible. He worked for various charitable institutions and had a passion for fund raising. Jason really believed you can make a difference and recently discovered a new passion working at Calgary City Hall which fed his love for communication and public [...]Read More

Joey and Shane… in Stereo

September 20, 2011 - By

If you didn’t get a chance to hear the Joey versus Shane debate on CBC on Monday, here’s a link so you can listen to the audio.

http://www.cbc.ca/homestretch/episode/2011/09/19/pc-bloggers/

Tweet the Results: How it became a trending topic

May 3, 2011 - By

People in favour of tweeting the results called a victory last night.  A civil disobedience movement that really sticks it to the country’s election broadcast laws.

Of course, don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed.  Last night’s trending was aided, in large part, by the disobedience to the civil disobedience.  That is, the humourous posts that seemed to be going on all night.  Between spoilers to movies, books, and historical events, #tweettheresults was then picked up worldwide and, like many trending memes on TeH InterwebZ, was then followed.  At times, it was actually difficult to find the results among the multitude of tweets that made fun of the whole event.

The most re-tweeted, of course, was one that said Cons █████████ Libs ████████, etc., both a mockery of the whole thing and of the redacted access to information requests that happen with government.

In the end, though, last night was a flurry of twitter activity.  While its use in Calgary was sporadic, at best, with exception to a few specific candidates, it’s obvious that the power of twitter in a toe-the-party-line system is not necessarily the civil discourse that happens with politicians so much as the information [...]Read More

The ghost of Sir Sandford Fleming

April 26, 2011 - By

Worldwide timezones were introduced by a number of individuals, (see wikipedia), including Canadian Sir Sandford Fleming.  As you are well aware, this enables Albertans to watch House, M.D. at an earlier time as it plays in an Eastern time zone, and enabled us in university to watch CSI at midnight (when I lived in Ontario) because it played later in B.C.

Of course, it has this other impact during elections… poll times.  And, if you hadn’t heard, section 329 of the Elections Act of Canada prohibits transmission of election results prior to all polls closing.  This means that, even if the polls are counted in the Atlantic, they cannot be transmitted until the polls are closed in B.C.

A number of social media aficionados are calling for a #tweettheresults campaign, a civil disobedience run to defy this seemingly antiquated law that cannot possibly be enforced over TeH InterwebZ.

While I think it’s important to call to attention the law and its to-be-futile attempt at containing the results, I think responsible Canadians need to look past the law itself and look at why this exists.

While we have a general idea of how different areas will vote, due to the [...]Read More

The Youth

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April 22, 2011 - By

Today I read an article by Michael Taube, former speechwriter for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, entitled, “Vote Mob Mentality

It reminded me a lot of comments made by a particular political scientist in Calgary during the civic election.  So much, so, that it has made me want to comment on this.

I’ll be honest – I see a vote mob as even less possible to translate into large votes as twitter, but of course, I’m no longer in the carefree days of University, and thus… old.  Maybe not very old, but I’m out of the loop on this one, so I would be fooling myself if I said that I knew how the mentality worked and that it would or would not translate into votes.

This particular line caught my attention, “I wouldn’t be surprised if most of these participants stayed home on May 2.”  Wow. I mean, replace May 2 with October 14, and you would have the civic commentary on twitter before the political scientists, in the know, knew what hit them. (By the way, I have it on good authority that the particular person I am thinking of now has more respect for social media in [...]Read More

The Revolution – Appendix A

April 14, 2011 - By

I recently got the chance to chat with the talented Trevor Scott Howell over at FFWD Weekly about social media in the election.  You can see the article at:

The Revolution will not be Twittered at FFWDWeekly

I first met Trevor during the Conservative Party of Canada Calgary West AGM when hundreds of people turned out to vote in a new Board.  I’ve always been impressed by his writing, so was happy to oblige.

I wanted to expand a bit on my comments in the article.  As anyone who has dealt with the media knows, interviews often take 5-10 minutes, and very small portions of it are quoted – never mind the fact that they also tend to be like job interviews… 5 minutes later you walk away and go “$&%@ – I should have said …”  So, here is… the rest of the story.

First, there are a few Calgary candidates who seem to be using the tool well.  From my experience, those who have had plenty of time with Twitter before an election tend to navigate it better during.  It really takes a while to get a feel for how the communication channel works.  However, in [...]Read More

Twibate #elxn41: The People’s Twibate

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April 5, 2011 - By

For those who watched CalgaryPolitics.com closely during the civic election, you may have seen a debate series we ran over Twitter, which we lovingly called, “Twibates.”  We ran a twibate for mayoralty candidates, two twibates for aldermanic (even- and odd-numbered wards), and then a final for trustees.

Similar debates were either held, or considered, in other parts of the province and country, and even got some attention by a few in-the-know social media people in the United States.  A few days ago, someone asked me whether or not we were going to run any for the Federal election, and that started a discussion with CalgaryPolitics folk.

Unlike a civic election, provincial and federal have party mandates.  It would be highly likely that, in such a twibate, we would not see individuals from certain parties, or just the same talking points from candidate after candidate after candidate from the same party.  Not very conducive to the best forum format.  We also considered having representatives from parties, but that does not seem very open, nor is it good for anyone who considers the vote for the individual more important than the vote for the party logo.

So, what we are considering (and [...]Read More

Independent Fundraising Explained

April 4, 2011 - By

Independent James Ford has raised concerns, once again, about financing of election campaigns from an Independent standpoint, and the disparate rules that govern it.  You can read a bit about it on the CBC article, and also a Metro article also discussing the issue:

News articles can only convey so much information, so I thought I would take the opportunity to explore what the specific problems are, and what could be done to fix them.

Now, let’s get something clear off the get-go.  Any potential election candidate, once they have secured both an Official Agent and an Auditor, can raise funds for the purpose of the election, hold it in a bank account, and spend it on electoral activities.  However, and this is a big however, they cannot issue tax receipts until a specific point in time.  When I talk about fundraising from this point forward, I talk about the ability to issue tax receipts.

(And Even if the fact that you don’t get 75% back on your taxes with a donation up to $400 to a federal campaign doesn’t scare you away from giving money to [...]Read More

Campaigning?

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March 29, 2011 - By

Let me ask you something.  For those of you who have ever interviewed individuals for a position, have you ever hired the person who was least prepared for the interview?  If you’ve been to an interview, have you ever been completely unprepared and felt like you were entitled to be the frontrunner?

This is Day 4 of the election campaign, and it seems like people are slowly wandering out of the gate, casually strolling into the campaigning role.  We wonder why politics has detracted so much, and yet, some people show such lack of enthusiasm by not showing up on day 1 that I have to wonder if anyone even wants the job anymore.

I feel like the job posting for MP should have an end date of, “until the right candidate is found,” rather than the May 2nd deadline.

Look, I know people are busy.  I know people may not think that they have a chance, especially if you are not wearing blue and live in our fair city.  But there are a few things that have got to be so dreadfully easy that you wonder that, with the lack of it, if anyone cares at all.

Let’s start [...]Read More

Technology and Campaigning: 2011 Style

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March 28, 2011 - By

The 2011 election has been dubbed by some media as “The Twitter Election.”  Of course, twitter both existed in 2008 and was used by some candidates, but was not nearly as prolific as either the 2008 Presidential campaign in the United States or more recent civic elections.

Shortly before the 2008 election, Facebook began the task of converting politicians to the new “Pages” infrastructure which exists and is used to a large degree today for politicking.

Facebook ads have been tried and tested, and will likely be used far more than usual.  Also look for the usual barrage of Google Ads.  Both are relatively inexpensive and tend to bring in a lot of traffic for the money.  (And you could make it come up when someone searches for your opponent’s name: sneaky!)

From the depths of my own campaign experiences and interest in all things interweb, here are some thoughts on some other high tech places and things to do this election.

 

QR Codes

Those two-dimensional barcodes you’re starting to see everywhere are called QR codes.  They can be scanned by a number of apps on all sorts of mobile devices, and are designed to be a way to [...]Read More

4th Election in 7 years

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March 27, 2011 - By

You’ve heard this a lot if you’ve been listening to talking points: The 4th Election in 7 Years.  Seems like a lot, and it is. This is, of course, the 41st election since Confederation.

So from July 1, 1867 to March 25, 2011, there were just shy of 52,500 days, with 41 elections spanning across them, giving the average parliament 3.5 years of service.  This, of course, includes majority and minority parliaments.

Of the 40 parliaments already completed (as the 41st parliament will not start until after May 2), 13 of them have been minorities.  The longest was William Lyon Mackenzie King’s 14th parliament (which flip-flopped between majority and minority), followed by Stephen Harper’s 39th Parliament.  The shortest were Arthur Meighan’s 15th parliament (3 days), and Alexander Mackenzie’s 2nd parliament (56 days)

The average time of all of these parliaments is approximately 517 days.  If we remove the 14th parliament (since it wasn’t wholly a minority), we get approximately 449 days.  If we get rid of the two super-short parliaments, we get an average of 553 days.

Now, if we look at the time between June 28, 2004, the 38th General Election, and May 2, 2011, the 41st General Election, [...]Read More

… and the race is on…

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March 26, 2011 - By

I’m sure if you are up on politics, you know that His Excellency David Johnston collapsed Parliament officially this morning, after yesterday’s motion of confidence against the Government was passed by the majority of the House.  If you weren’t in the know, well, now you know – never mind that in a few hours, the boulevards will be littered with signs.

Here at CalgaryPolitics we are hoping to bring you some information about the Federal Election, including Riding Profiles in the coming weeks.

Don’t know what riding you’re in?  Elections Canada has always had a nice postal-code based search tool called the Voter Information Service.  While you’re at it, consider working for your local returning office – they tend to be slightly busy around this time.

May 2nd is the day we go to the polls.  The next 37 days are going to be busy.

Federal Financing Primer

March 24, 2011 - By

Or, How I learned to stop worrying and love audits.

After watching the chaos that is civic electoral finance, I have had much more appreciation for the rules that govern Federal electoral finances.  While I don’t want to bore you to death, I would like to take this opportunity to point out a few things about Federal campaigns and the rules that govern them.  Specifically, I want to focus on who and when they can fundraise, how donations and donors are tracked, the auditing and financial paperwork process post-election, and the spending limits employed.

 

1. Who and When can candidates fundraise?

There are three entities that can fundraise for elections.  These are political parties as a whole (who must be recognized by Elections Canada), registered constituency associations for those parties, and candidates.  Transfers are allowed between the entities (so, candidates will remit surpluses to their constituency associations after an election, and all funds raised between elections can be transferred back to candidates).

Candidates cannot officially fundraise with the ability to give tax receipts until they are official candidates in the election.  This requires sign-off from the Returning Officer in the particular riding, and cannot happen before the writ is [...]Read More

The Budget and the Looming Federal Election

March 22, 2011 - By

How the heck does this work?  Well, having had to watch closely all of the proceedings in order to prepare for a coming election, let’s just say that I’ve sweated through a few budgets, and watched carefully how these play out.  Here is a paraphrased piece on how the budget process works in Ottawa, and where that leaves us.

The House of Commons is governed by a set of rules known as the Standing Orders.  Order 83, 84, and 85, govern the budget debate directly.

Once the budget is introduced, it begins a four-day snap-count.  The motion is put to the House, and normally, the Official Opposition, then the next largest opposition party, add an amendment and a sub-amendment respectively.  On Day 2, the debate continues on the budget, ending with a vote on the sub-amendment with 15 minutes prior to the end of the budget business for the day.  Day 3 is debate, finalized with a vote on the amendment, again, started at 15 minutes before the end.  Finally, on Day 4, the motion is voted upon after debate.

Any of these days can trigger an election, although normally with the gesturing in parliament, it is the last day [...]Read More

Ward 14 Recount Details

October 21, 2010 - By

Recount was called because “there were more votes cast than ballots sent to the polling station.”

Upon recount, it was determined that some groups of “50″ ballots were in groups of smaller numbers – 35.  So, it turnout out there was not the initial fear of more votes than ballots, and due to this, vote counts were changed slightly for each candidate.  However, it is not enough to turn the election.

The good news is, it does not look like electoral fraud happened.

Update/Editorial: I am curious what this means for the rest of it. I mean, if this counting problem existed here, could this have happened elsewhere?  What controls are in place for this part of the counting process?

Party aftermath

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October 19, 2010 - By

Last night was a lot of fun.  CTV had a cameraguy there to catch our antics, and some poor student  photographers unfortunately now have to look at pictures of me.  I apologize in advance.

We had the good fortune to have Mayoral Candidate Jon Lord visit us and join us for a beer.  We also had Danielle Smith come down to join us in the festivities.

We had the CalgaryPolitics team feeding the board numbers for the evening, and often had numbers faster than some televisions stations.  Which was awesome.

CalgaryPolitics didn’t end last night.  We’ve got a lot of post-election analysis coming, and will continue to talk about issues that face Calgary, as we lead up to the race in 2013.  Of course, my personal arena of preference is Federal, so except a few political posts about other political arenas as well.

We look forward to bringing you Social Media stats from the election, dissecting the last few months, and continuing to bring you information about politics in your city. Our city.