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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

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7 comments

  1. Really appreciated the discussion around city governance in Toronto. Saskatoon recently made a change in its governance. Some changes include moving from two main sub standing committees of Council to five; giving these committees more power; reducing the number of regular Council meetings, and shifting more meetings to daytime. It’s new and with this comes much learnings.

  2. I have voted for Catholic Trustee in 2000, 20003, 2006 and 2010.
    I voted Public Trustee in 2014.

    2000 I picked randdomly
    2003 & 2006 I picked which name popped out the most
    2010 I picked which name I recognized the most
    2014 same as 2010

    I never bothered with trustee research as I am not in school.

    Most people don’t care.

    I was forced to vote for trustee. I was planning (2014 election) to vote just for Mayor and Councillor.
    My ballot wouldn’t go through if I didn’t have 3 votes.

    I never got a single flyer from school trustees EVER.

    I got campaign materials from mayoral candidates and Councillors. Not a single trustee sign on my street.

  3. It doesn’t seem much different for city council. People vote for names they recognize so incumbents almost always get reelected, even crazy people like Rob Ford and Mammoliti.

  4. @Miroslav Glavic you do NOT have to vote for Trustee. As the article discusses 10%-15% of voters DID NOT vote for a Trustee. You are mistaken, you do NOT need 3 votes on a ballot. The machines will not report “not enough” votes (maybe they need 1).

  5. I’m sure that at least that number didn’t think ahead on School Trustees, but it’s also a factor somewhat in Councillor races, where I believe it inflates the votes of incumbents, or people with very visible campaigns (signs, media).
    When I was waiting in line to vote, we were told that there might be delays. The lady in front of me said that she really wanted to vote this year because of the mayor, and didn’t want to leave without voting. A worker informed us how to mark our ballots and mentioned that we’d be voting for Mayor, Councillor and School Trustee. She seemed surprised and said she hadn’t prepared for those things. Others next to her were also surprised and trying to figure out how many they had to vote for.
    With 60+ turn out and plenty of new voters, there were likely a ton of surprised people, particularly as municipal elections are now only 4 years while Provincial and Federal elections or bi-elections only have one person to vote for. I expect many of the people that new about the Council race only heard of one candidate other than signs.

  6. As an addendum, someone brought my attention to the case of TDSB ward 8, where one of the candidates, Claudia Webb, decided after the Sept. 12 date for withdrawing that she would stop campaigning and actively throw her support behind a different candidate (see http://www.ClaudiaWebb.ca ). She still got almost 4,000 votes (3,916). And she didn’t even come in last!

  7. In terms of random voting for City Councillor candidates, the following 4 people ran in Ward 34 this election and neither of them even campaigned:

    Douglas Owen 1171 6.3%

    Faisal Boodhwani 705 3.8%

    Amer Karaman 486 2.6%

    Alan Selby 453 2.4%

    Obviously many people just selected names without doing any research. It’s absurd that candidates who don’t even bother to campaign can get any support. They shouldn’t even be allowed to run if they’re that lazy. I guess they just want to be able to say on their resume that they ran for public office?