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

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

With only 5 weeks to learn who will be running in this election, it is time for a primer on the 19 officially registered political parties.  The policies and platforms of each party will be discussed over the next few days.  Here are the list of parties running in this election:

The Big Five

Conservative Party of Canada

As the current minority government, the Conservative Party of Canada will be looking for a majority government once again.  In the 2008 election, they gained 19 seats over 2006 despite only a 1.4% increase in the popular vote.  If they manage to gain another 19, they will easily have the majority government they seek.

Liberal Party of Canada

The Liberal Party continues to lag slightly behind the Conservative Party in the polls for the third straight election, but they will hope for improvement in the coming weeks behind new leader Michael Ignatieff.  The Liberals had a massive reduction in seats from 103 to 77 last election, with a 4% drop in the popular vote.

New Democratic Party

Under [...]Read More

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?

You may already have read about it in our other post…  However, being the end of our run here at CalgaryPolitics for the civic election period (we’re not going away… but things might get a little quieter for a bit), I feel that it’s necessary to MENTION IT AGAIN!!!!!

Here’s the above-the-fold details:

Where: Beckham’s Pub at 108 17th Avenue NW that’s NW, not 17th South. And not the one close to Mount Royal as one of our crew ended up once accidentally.

When: We start this thing at 7:30pm and will go as long as possible.

Who: Anyone is welcome.  We will have media there, as well as CalgaryPolitics crew hosting.

As Joey mentioned, there will be a forum and an election for Ward 15, whose current representative is Chairman Zhao.  There’s a number of challengers, and I can guarantee the forum will be unlike any others you’ve seen this election.

Feel free to join our Facebook Event page if you are on FB.

Tomorrow night is it.  We select our council over the next three years.  You might as well come out and party, because we’re not going to have a civic election party like this [...]Read More

I was invited to the VoteCalgary aldermanic forum on Wednesday and heard all the aldermanic candidates given their 90 seconds on various questions that were important to the CHBA and UDI. While some are critical of the development industry and their stance and influence (money particularly), the forum gave us a glimpse of something else beyond what we usually hear about special interest groups. Whether we like it or not, land use and development consumes 70-80% of a city’s agenda and function. While many have been looking at issues like arts and culture or perhaps the much-dreaded airport tunnel issue, the main focus of city hall and city administration is about land use. If there is one thing that candidates need to be on top of, it has to be about land development.

The forum was all about specifics. All you have to do is look around the room and see what people from the industry are thinking about when candidates talk. Here are some thoughts about tonight:

1. You have 90 seconds, not minutes: It’s OK to go a little bit over the time limit to finish your thought, but your priority is in answering the question. It really [...]Read More

For those waiting for the answers from the Mayoralty Twibate; I’m still working on that, and will get it up as soon as I can.  Until then, I wanted to post format changes for Twibate 2.0.

As a reminder, on Tuesday, September 21 we will have a Twibate for Wards 1,3,7,9,11,13 (Odd numbered, except Ward 5 due to CivicCamp’s Forum)

On Thursday, September 23 we will have a Twibate for Wards 2,4,5,6,8,10,12,14 (Even numbered, plus Ward 5)

Twibate Format Changes

For those who tuned in last Tuesday, you are aware that questions came fast and furious, despite the main questions being a full 10 minutes apart.  You also know sometimes things were difficult to follow due to re-tweets, side questions, and some lack of ability to follow which answer goes with which question

So.  Here’s what the team has come up with.

Questions will be 15 minutes apart, starting at 7:05.  This will actually mean the last question is posed at 8:50pm – that will reduce our twibates to 8 questions each.

Questions will still be tagged with #yycTBq and #yycTB, but will also have the question number. So, it will be “Q3: [question] #yycTBq #yycTB”.  Candidates are strongly [...]Read More

Alas, it’s true my friends. According to the Calgary Herald, Kirk Schmidt has fallen on his sword. This, a day after moderating the first ever Twibate for the civic election. “It was chaos, but it was organized chaos,” he’d said after the debate. Apparently that chaos, combined with his heavy (albeit clandestine) involvement in the Sun TV enterprise, was just too much for our faithful correspondent. Look:

(I took a screenshot because I’m guessing the story, here, will soon be changed.)

Next time, Kirk, just ask for help. No need to throw yourself on medieval weaponry in front of a bunch of reporters like that.