Limes with Orange

Well, it's election time again. And I'm not talking about the still a year away U.S. election that the world will be watching. I'm talking about our little municipal election coming up in Calgary on October 15, 2007. My favourite level of politics used to be provincial… until I moved to Alberta. Now I find provincial politics depressing and completely devoid of hope that things might change. So I guess my new favourite level is federal, because even though it is also depressing it is only partially devoid of hope that things might change. For some reason, I find municipal elections less exciting even though the elected officials in that case are the ones that most affect my daily life… go figure (I never claimed to be logical all of the time).

I haven't decided who I'm voting for yet. I'm not a fan of our incumbent mayor but I'm just now getting my first glimpse of the alternatives. I'm also not a fan of my Ward 8 incumbent either, but again I need to check out the alternatives (the full candidate list is available as a pdf). But here are the mayoral candidates with links to their websites:

Bertram, David
Bronconnier, Dave *incumbent
Fielding, Elizabeth Kaur
Foster, Allan
Heck, Harry *interesting website
Jenkins, Sandy *well-designed website
Kassam, Alnoor *informative website
Sunstrum, Jonathan Joseph (J.J.) *intriguing approach
Zhao, Jeremy *interesting website

It's nice to see that improving public transit seems to be an important issue for most candidates. And the environment is also right up there with many of them. Some of the websites are a little sparse, which makes it harder to get to know the candidate without actually going out to events and debates. Which, given the level of voter apathy, is a risky approach. And if you're trying to capture the youth vote, you'd better have a good online presence. Just a tip for any mayoral candidates that happen to land on this blog for some reason.

There's also an interesting project going on that I'm not sure if it's too late to participate in or not. (I definitely would have been interested if I'd had the time to devote to that instead of having wasted my time recently on something that wasn't worth my effort.) ABetterCalgary.com is looking for people with devices of any kind, capable of capturing video for a documentary… intended as Michael Moore meets Beastie Boys' "I Shot That!" Its subject is the problems facing Calgary today (transportation, corruption, urban sprawl, pollution, etc.). It draws its narrative structure from following the mayoral campaign of Jonathan Joseph (J.J.) Sunstrum. So if you're interested in working on such a documentary, check out ABetterCalgary.com.

But if you do nothing else, at least check out these websites and please, please, please vote as an informed voter.

Labels: politics