River City Writer

It’s official, Stephen Mandel is the mayor of Edmonton for another term. This result comes as a shock to absolutely no one. The one thing that did strike me about this election was the utter lack of participation by most Edmontonians. The turn out was dismal. I don’t have the exact numbers right now, but I know that it was low.

Admittedly, this campaign was fairly uneventful, and I didn’t really see a lot of information about it that didn’t require some degree of digging, but that’s not a very good excuse. People need to be politically engaged. People need to vote!

I don’t know what needs to be done to get people to care about politics in this city, but something needs to be done. The problem, of course, isn’t just in Edmonton. It’s a widespread problem, that extends across the country, and throughout most democratic nations.

The problem is basic voter apathy. People feel that all of the candidates are essentially the same. People feel that their vote doesn’t matter, that they can’t change the system. Perhaps more problematic than those issues is that people don’t think voting matters at all. They take their freedom for granted.

Most of us have never had to live through a situation that genuinely threatened out freedom. Most of us can’t comprehend living in a dictatorship. The idea of an oppressive regime isn’t a real fear for the average person. Hell, to be honest, most people probably wouldn’t even notice if an oppressive regime took power, so long as they did it quietly.

If the government simply decided that they weren’t going to call an election, I bet they could carry on for at least 7 or 8 years before most people noticed that, “Hey, we haven’t had an election in quite a long time.” That, to me, is more frightening than the idea of a dictator taking control of the government by force.

Still, I don’t know what is necessary to encourage people to taking voting seriously. Since I don’t have the answers, I’ll put it to you: what can be done to increase citizen engagement in the democratic process both in Edmonton, and around the world?

It’s election day in Edmonton, today. If you haven’t already decided who you’re going to vote for, you should probably stay home from the polling station. However, if it’s still early in the day when you’re reading this, you might be able to do the necessary research to decide who are the candidates for you.

To help you out with that last minute information, here are a few links:

• Official Edmonton Municipal Election Website
• Daveberta - Edmonton-based political blogger
• CBC: Edmonton Votes

The polling stations are open until 8pm, so if you’re reading this earlier than 5pm, you should have time to research all of the candidates in your area, and make a relatively informed decision.

The past few days, I’ve been wondering aloud about where to find information on the candidates running in this year’s municipal election. Edmonton is set to vote in just 13 days, and I’ve seen surprisingly little in the way of campaign information.

The local media is one obvious source, but they tend to focus mostly on the mayoral candidates, and not on those seeking council seats.

The Internet would be the next obvious place to look. I’ve heard that all (or at least most) of the candidates have MySpace and Facebook profiles. The only problem with this is that I don’t even know the names of all the people running for council in my ward. If I don’t have names, I can’t look them up online.

One of the main reasons I don’t know the names of the candidates is that I haven’t seen very many campaign signs in my neighbourhood.

I’m all for saving the trees, but this is one instance where I really think that advertising is a necessary evil. Get your name in front of my eyes! Shove it in my face as many times as you can, that way, I’ll remember your name when election day comes.

I won’t vote based on name recognition alone (nor should anyone else), but it will help me to do more research, and find out if you’re the person I want to vote for.

Luckily, while trolling the Internet for “edmonton civil election 2007,” I came across Daveberta.ca, a blog dedicated to Alberta politics. Dave has been writing a lot about the Edmonton municipal election. He’s also gathered links to all of the candidates’ websites in one place.

If you’re looking for information about the candidates in the 2007 Edmonton municipal election, or anything related to politics in Alberta, I highly recommend checking out Dave’s blog.

If you have any other good sources of information regarding the 2007 municipal election, please share them in the comments section.