Just getting yourself out to vote, while necessary, isn’t going to be enough to get a better city council and school boards for our city. If we are to achieve that, we all need to get out on the last few days of the campaign to engage our friends, neighbours, colleagues, etc., in getting them out to vote. The more people who vote, the greater the odds of getting a more representative result from the election.

Please tell everyone you know that you are voting (or have voted if you did the advance vote). Nothing encourages behaviour in people more than seeing others engaging in that behaviour. “Primate see, primate do.”

However, I strongly recommend against saying things like “you should vote” — nobody likes being told what they “should” do (and it often triggers a rebellious response leading to the opposite behaviour out of spite). Far more effective, in my experience, has been things like “I’m voting on Monday, have you thought about your vote?”

If that hook catches them, I then say something like “there is a website with links to all the candidate information if you want to know more about what the choices are,” and then [...]Read More

Friday before the election. I’d say it’s the calm before the storm, but I’m pretty sure we’d all know I’d be lying. The fact is, every single campaign with serious intentions on winning is going to be kicking into high gear this weekend. Prepare to be bombarded.

Name recognition is key in any election. It’s why the sign war is so important, especially for candidates who may not be as well known by the general populous prior to an election. You thought the boulevards looked full now? Wait for this weekend. Any campaign with any leftover sign stock will be out repairing signs, putting up new ones in new locations (perhaps even some more illegal locations such as medians and prohibited roads), and trying to get you to see their name a million more times in a subliminal effort for you to mark that X beside them.

Campaigns with any money leftover will be looking for ways to grab your attention. It wouldn’t surprise me if a few people get phone calls this weekend in a last ditch effort to ascertain who is voting for whom, and provide internal polling numbers for the all important Get-out-the-vote.

Remember when you told [...]Read More

I’ll start off by saying that I’m an avid voter. Not only do I vote in every government election I can, but I’ve voted in a school board by-election, for my credit union board, and more. If I had had the chance, I would have voted before I was 18 (I’ve been politically conscious for most of my life). I can not, in any way, be considered a non-voter. Further, I actively engage people with resources intended to support their voting, have moderated candidate forums, been an election station worker, and run workshops to help people better understand the voting process.

Please keep that in mind as you read the rest of this.

I’ve often heard people say around election time “If you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain.” That’s wrong on more than one level.

On a basic freedom of speech principle, people have the right to complain no matter what they have or haven’t done.

There are more than just a few non-voters who see voting as an endorsement of a system they object to (I object to the current system, too, I just think that voting can help reduce some of its harm). [...]Read More

Nation, I belong to a sub-class of human observer that Ken Chapman and others refer to as “The Influentials”. 

This isn’t a reflection of status or economic power, but rather a label that reflects the fact that, when people are wondering what’s going on in their world, or for whom they should consider casting a ballot, they look to me for guidance.  Not because I’m smarter than they are (unlikely), not because I’m well-connected (somewhat more likely, but still far from a sure thing).  It’s because I pay attention – because I’m interested, and I have time.  I’ve got no exceptional qualifications in this regard, other than simply that – interest, and time.  And so, when the time comes to debate an issue, form an opinion, or cast a ballot, my email fills up, and my phone rings.  “Who should I take a look at?”  “Where do the candidates stand on MY issues?”  “Who should I vote for?”

That last one, you can imagine, isn’t being asked by English teachers.  At least, not in those exact words.

The fact of the matter, though, remains that I get asked to tell people for whom they should vote – and it’s not [...]Read More

I am very excited by the tangible increase in accessibility, accountability and openness in this election which is countering, at least a bit of, the traditional biases that traditionally serve to diminish our efforts at democracy. Some encouraging examples from the current election:

We have seen multiple lists of candidates in commercial media, and on advocacy group websites, reordered from biased ordering to alphabetical or random in direct response to complaints raised on Twitter.

We’ve seen ads for one candidate removed from CTV’s page listing their interviews with all the candidates, again in response to complaints on Twitter.

Due to a mix of citizen-led pressure, peer-pressure, and media awareness, we have many candidates pre-disclosing their donor lists — for the first time ever (that I’m aware of) in Calgary politics. This has made for some interesting, and sometimes quite telling, reading.

We have increased awareness of, and some tentative early actions for, accessibility for people with varying needs (such as disabilities and English as a second language). Many event organizers are becoming aware of the need to have wheelchair access. Some online videos are being subtitled for the hearing impaired and translated into other languages. There certainly remains much still [...]Read More

My esteemed colleague, Mr. DJ Kelly, wrote about this over a month ago.  Apparently, some “political scientists” aren’t listening.  There seems to be this myth that social media immediately equals young people, and, by association, they do not vote.  This is being touted as the reason why a social media strategy may not be effective.

There are two very wrong assumptions with this in my mind.  And I will address each.

The first is that there is an implied relationship between one set of statistics and another, or, lack thereof.

Let’s say we have 10 balls, 6 are red and 4 are blue.  They are randomly distributed into two bags, and you randomly pick one ball from one bag.  You reach into the first bag and grab one – what are the odds that it’s red ?  The fact here is, the number of bags don’t matter – since balls were randomly put in bags, there’s still a 60% chance you’ll grab a red one, regardless of which bag you choose.  Effectively, this is the way that some people see social media – that there is no relationship between those who use social media and voting patterns.

The second [...]Read More