Election forums

Went to two election forums this past week - one for Councilor of Daniel McKintyre, and the other for the School Division ward (WSD1 Ward 2 - my employer!)

The first was really well attended. The community centre was packed out, which gave the room a great buzz. The reason was that Red River College had made the forum a required assignment for thier journalism students, and the students were all there to listen to the candidates, but also to get interviews from the residents who attended the forum. I got interviewed three times, and I turned 2 people down because I really didn't want to do a lot of talking about something that I was there to listen to. How do you express an opinion about three people whom you have never heard talk before?

Actually, I shouldn't say that - I had heard Harvey and Trudy at the Neighbourhoods Alive! meeting the previous week. Didn't get much of the chance to talk to them about thier election platform, though. Don Salter was a new person to me, and I didn't know much about him.

The students actually seemed to outnumber the residents - which was really too bad, as it meant not a lot of people were interested. There were some really good questions - maybe once I get my notes organized, I can make some comments about what was said.

As to the school Division forum - it was a lot less people, had NO media coverage of any type (CBC was at the counselor forum), and was, in my mind, more interesting than the counselor forum. The smaller number of people was disappointing, but also meant that a lot of our questions got answered. The format was better - the questions were vetted by the moderator, and read out by him.

Personally, I feel that the School Division race is going to be an interesting one, although a difficult one to follow. Since the forum, I've been watching the news for articles about the trustees positions - nothing. Another disappointment was that many candidates for trustee don't have an online presence - not even a blog to just chat into.

Maybe I just expect everyone to be online now. I know that's not the case, but it's easy to forget.

later.