Yep, the civic election was in November.
Yep, Mayor Gregor Robertson and his Vision team continue to rule city hall.
Yep, that’s old news.
So here’s some semi-fresh news regarding the election: After lots of debate, city council agreed to have city staff review the 2014 civic vote and set up a committee to put some pressure on Victoria to change a few things for the 2018 election.
Go on — clap, shout or whatever it is you do when you hear such news.
Council decided to move forward on this a couple of weeks back, sparked by a motion moved successfully by NPA Coun. George Affleck and another by Vision Vancouver Coun. Andrea Reimer.
I should have brought you this info back then but, hey, with this transportation plebiscite news beast requiring my attention and Police Chief Jim Chu announcing his retirement and city council getting a raise and possibly wanting a significant one in the future and this flu bug doing a number on me, well, I've been kind of distracted.
Anyway, council told staff to look at what it will take to set up an independent committee to do a whole bunch of work, including surveying candidates and parties about their experience in the election and determining whether there’s enough people and resources to properly run the election.
Once that committee is up and running, council wants it to provide an analysis on what factors were considered most significant to the increase in voter turnout from 35 per cent in 2011 to 44 per cent in 2014.
I would guess more advanced voting days and people being able to vote at any polling station would be reasons. The NPA's Kirk LaPointe running a campaign that garnered him an impressive 73,443 votes could be a factor. People wanting to ensure Mayor Gregor Robertson and his Vision team continued to rule city hall could be another.
The committee will also tackle one of Reimer's favourite topics: campaign finance reform.
Although a previous council got members of Vision, COPE and the NPA to create its own committee and come up with a list of requests to call on Victoria to change the laws to get the big money out of civic politics, this new committee will give it another shot.
And, it will also specifically request the province:
• For the ability to use proportional voting systems.
• To make anonymous balloting data available in open data format after an election.
• To conduct an online voting pilot, or experiment.
• Consider some of the strategies outlined by the Engaged City Task Force of April 2014 to get more people to participate in elections and follow through on a recommendation from the city's Healthy City Strategy to have at least a 60 per cent voter turnout by 2025.
"We've been advocating for these things for almost 10 years now in some cases and perhaps it's time to call in some reinforcements and see what we can do differently on them," Reimer said.
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In other voting news...
Spoke to former NDP MP/MLA/cabinet minister Ian Waddell the other day about a documentary he's helping produce that examines why young people could care less about casting a ballot.
It's called, 25 down: Why young people don't vote.
Waddell said actor Dylan Playfair (son of former NHLer Jim Playfair) and a crew have travelled from Whistler to Ferguson, Missouri to Europe to speak to young folks about exercising their franchise.
The film is still being edited and Waddell said a Kickstarter campaign was launched to raise some more cash to get it done. The trailer can be viewed on the Kickstarter web page.
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