Hummingbird604.com » municipal politics

Being the researcher and the phenomenon – VoterMedia.Org

Raul — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:09:50 +0000

I was briefly reading a couple of notes by Sean Orr (Beyond Robson) and Rebecca Bollwitt (Miss604 on Radio Zoom) on the work of Dr. Mark Latham, founder of VoterMedia.Org and I thought to myself “hey, I haven’t even talked to Mark yet since I came back“. I probably should do it soon.

I have to admit that when I was nominated to participate in the Vancouver Election Blog Awards, I was pretty flattered. It made me feel as though my content was deemed worthy and relevant (in regards to my coverage of political issues, particularly municipal elections in Vancouver).

Truth be told, as someone who has taught public policy, at some points during the VoterMedia project, I have felt both like the researcher and the phenomenon under study. Given my training and education, I am aware of the behavioral mechanisms that underlie the project itself, encouraging bloggers to create guides to educate the public for a better, more informed decision-making process.

Given that I understand how the project works, the hypothesis would be that if I wanted to be rewarded with a monetary incentive, I would be interested in creating such guides. And truth be told, I *do* like monetary rewards But the thing is, my blog is rather personal and while I do have written a fair number of posts on municipal and Canadian politics, and on public policy/water policy as they pertain to Vancouver, I still primarily blog about myself (yeah, you can call me self-absorbed but truth be told, I am not really)

I just want to say that the project has a great underlying platform and it would be great if we (bloggers) kept our readers well informed, so that they can make choices that they feel are more educated and based on data rather than just purely political affiliation or random voting.

And I know that everyone will want me to link to Kevin Grandia’s Vote for Environment site (a lot of my off-line friends have already emailed me saying “hey Raul, can you link to this?”) so here is the link. The foundation of Vote For Environment is to create patterns of strategic voting (i.e. voting not for whom you are ideologically inclined or whom you’d vote but for whom has more chances of winning).

EDIT – I had written this post weeks ago but somehow kept putting it off and now it’s published. Obviously, Vote For Environment’s focus was the Federal election (and we all know what happened to that). But you could still vote strategically in the provincial by-election and municipal election.

The importance of voting in American, Canadian and Vancouver elections

Raul — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:30:16 +0000

One of the areas where my mother does research is in electoral studies (however, she studies elections in Mexico more than anything, although lately she’s been interested in Canadian elections). She was mentioning how important it was to galvanize people and make them want to go and vote.

It’s true that many, many people refuse to vote because they don’t think that their vote is going to count. I was reading some statistics on how many people have voted in recent Canadian elections and I recall a figure hovering around 64% or so (of the whole electorate).

The most recent election for President was the most contested in Mexican history and I can assure you that one of the reasons for that was precisely that a lot of the people who many people thought wouldn’t vote did indeed cast a ballot.

Even though I’m not American, I’m pretty darn sure I have American readers (and of course, Canadian) so I’d strongly encourage you to register to vote. Hat tips to Steve Jagger who tweeted this video (source: YouTube) where lots of US movie stars encourage viewers to vote.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UaRXvRwhOk&hl=en&fs=1]

Gay-bashing on Davie Street? What’s wrong with this city?

Raul — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:59:19 +0000

I hate any kind of bullying or bashing, but a gay bashing is one of those hate crimes I simply can’t stomach. It’s amazing how much safety is taken for granted anywhere, and how religion, sexual orientation or race can create such amazing divides. We are all human beings, whether we like it or not. I hadn’t heard mention of this until my good friend JT mentioned that tae-kwon-do training may come handy when it comes to having to deal with this type of attacks.

I was reading some of the CTV online coverage and given that these stories indicate that frequently bashing victims fail to report these crimes, I would like to commend the victim (Jordan Smith) for coming forward. And encourage those who have been victims to raise their voice.

It’s somewhat frustrating that so much progress against homophobia has been achieved, yet public safety seems to be compromised in what is supposed to be the safest area for queer people (Vancouver’s West End). This should definitely be an issue that should be covered in the upcoming municipal election – how is public safety going to be enhanced? Tougher laws against bashers? I don’t really know.

This unfortunate and sad event really reminds me of how much sometimes we actually do need superheroes (the first thing that sprung to mind when I read about this was the movie “Super-Amigos”, a Mexican Canadian production that aired during the 2007 Vancouver Queer Film Festival). And those who come forward when being victims of crime (any crime, really) are also heroes. Kudos to you Jordan, and to everyone else who has reported these horrible incidents.