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To prepare for a potential federal election in the midst of a pandemic, <a href="https://globalnews.ca/tag/elections-canada/" target="_blank">Elections Canada</a> went shopping.
It bought 18.8 million surgical masks, 577,770 bottles of hand sanitizer, 411,310 face shields, 126,100 plexiglass shields and 40,000 packages of disinfectant wipes.
It also picked up 16 million pencils — including 3.65 million ‘large-grip’ pencils — because if there is a pandemic election, Elections Canada expects each pencil to mark an ‘x’ just once — and then, in the interests of preventing disease being passed by pencil, to be tossed away.
All those purchases — and much more — are part of a complete rethink Elections Canada has gone through for more than a year now as it focused on one single mission.
Elections Canada spokesperson Natasha Gauthier outlined that focus during a recent interview with Global News: “What can we do now to make sure that if there is an election, we are able to deliver an election that is as safe as possible for voters, for Elections Canada staff, for poll workers and to make sure that we are able to do that in a way that the integrity of the election is not compromised in any way?&#8221;
Global News met Gauthier in the Elections Canada warehouse near downtown Ottawa that contains hundreds of crates of pencils, personal protective equipment (PPE), ballots and more — all ready to be shipped out to 338 ridings in support of the task of soliciting the political preferences of as many as 19 million voters.
The pandemic elections already run in B.C., Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and, most recently, in Newfoundland and Labrador — as well as the U.S. presidential election of last fall — all clearly demonstrated that the pandemic will have a huge impact on the way voters pick their politicians, the way politicians find the votes they need, and the way election administrators make sure everything is done fairly and accurately.
		
			Read more:<a class="c-readmore__link" href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7525289/pandemic-election-integrity-at-stake-with-millions-of-mail-in-ballots-expected-elections-canada-docs/" data-track-region="content-read-more" title="Pandemic election integrity at stake with millions of mail-in-ballots expected, Elections Canada docs say" target="_blank">
				Pandemic election integrity at stake with millions of mail-in-ballots expected, Elections Canada docs say			</a>
		
	
A federal general election in a pandemic would be no different. It would be a unique experience for all involved.
For millions of voters, the big change will be where and when a ballot is cast. Elections Canada is betting as many as five million Canadians will choose to vote by mail. That would be nearly 100 times more mail-in-ballots than the 55,000 who mailed it in 2019.
But one thing that will not change is the method by which Canadian voters make their preferences known in a general election. Just as they have in every federal election in their history, Canadian voters will use a pencil and a piece of paper. It won’t matter if it’s in-person voting on election day, in-person voting at an advance poll or a mail-in ballot: there will be hard copies upon which the voter must make his or her mark.
And, just like in every other election in Canada’s history, all of those ballots will be examined by hand to verify their legitimacy; envelopes will be opened by hand; and the ballots — every single one of them — will be counted by hand in the presence of at least two independent Elections Canada employees watched closely by any scrutineers that registered political parties choose to send into any counting room.
Voting by hand. Counting by hand. No machines. Which means it will take time.
“People should be prepared to expect delays in the results. And we may not know the final results of the election on election night,” Gauthier said.
So voting and counting ballots will be using old-fashioned analog methods. But campaigning when public health authorities are discouraging or forbidding gatherings will be next-generation digital.
There will be a never-before-seen reliance on machines and algorithms that can slice and dice demographic data allowing parties to minutely and precisely target individuals with their pitches, pleas and policies.
		
			Read more:<a class="c-readmore__link" href="https://www.flyingeze.com/p/federal-election-battlegrounds-analysis" data-track-region="content-read-more" title="A first look at Canada’s next federal election battlegrounds" target="_blank">
				A first look at Canada’s next federal election battlegrounds			</a>
		
	
A barrage of automated smartphone texts, short viral videos and database-driven marketing delivered to glowing smartphone screens will replace the sweat, energy and enthusiasm at a political rally, the shouts and laughter of coffee-shop arguments, and those serious doorstop discussions with clean-cut candidates that have been the hallmarks of human campaigning for decades.
“There are no big rallies. It makes it very difficult to generate momentum,” said Dimitri Pantazopoulos, Vancouver-based president of Brockville Strategies and a veteran of election war rooms for small-c conservative parties across Canada, most recently for the BC Liberals last fall. “You had to think a little bit differently about how how to create an event and how to get public attention at a time when the public is focused, frankly, on something else — that being the pandemic.&#8221;
The BC Liberals lost last fall to the BC NDP, whose war room was led by Bob Dewar — a veteran of progressive campaigns in multiple provinces. But the pandemic campaign of last fall was nothing like he’d ever seen.
“It was unique and very different,” said Dewar, now a special advisor to Premier John Horgan. “We did not allow volunteers into our campaign office. It was just paid staff and we did no door-to-door canvassing — two big things that we&#8217;ve never done before. We were extremely nervous because there&#8217;s no playbook on this. There is no playbook on how you run a pandemic campaign.&#8221;
		
			Read more:<a class="c-readmore__link" href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7425258/coronavirus-election-fraud-covid-19-pandemic-n-b-p-e-i/" data-track-region="content-read-more" title="Coronavirus — Electoral fraud during a pandemic not an issue for election officials in N.B., P.E.I." target="_blank">
				Coronavirus — Electoral fraud during a pandemic not an issue for election officials in N.B., P.E.I.			</a>
		
	
One consequence, though, of campaigns that go all digital and atomize an electorate into its constituent parts is that a shared democratic experience is lost. The election experienced by an urban voter in a swing riding will be very different than the election experienced by a rural voter in a safe seat. The voter with two cars and a five-bedroom home is treated differently by campaigners than the transit user living in a basement apartment a block away. There will no longer be a common frame of reference for the politics that emerges from such an election.
&#8220;I actually don&#8217;t know whether or not my Instagram ads are the same as my neighbour&#8217;s Instagram ad, and probably they&#8217;re not,” said University of Guelph political science professor Tamara Small. &#8220;This idea of a one-on-one campaign, I think it&#8217;s seductive. I also think there&#8217;s some real democratic issues that we have to sort of think through because we don&#8217;t want one promise to this person and a different promise to that person. We want to have a sense of what the parties truly are going to do. And it&#8217;s hard to know what that looks like anymore.&#8221;
And an all-digital campaign is also bound to leave some behind for the simple reason that, even in this third decade of the 21st century, a digital divide continues to exist in Canada.
&#8220;It&#8217;s easy to think that technology is evenly distributed to everybody. It&#8217;s just not,” Small said. &#8220;And so, therefore, some people are not going to have the same sort of campaign as other people might.&#8221;
David Akin is the chief political correspondent for Global News.

Elections Canada bought 16 million pencils for voters to safely make their mark in a pandemic election. But a pandemic campaign could be an all-digital smartphone affair.

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ANALYSIS: 16 million pencils, 18.8 million masks — Canada prepares for a pandemic election

Flying Eze

Albertans may have already seen advertisements on social media endorsing candidates or highlighting issues ahead of this fall&#8217;s municipal election, and experts say voters need to be cautious about what they&#8217;re seeing and hearing.
Last summer, the UCP introduced multiple changes to municipal elections, allowing more money to be spent on influencing voters through third-party advertisers or political action committees, otherwise known as PACs.
		
			Read more: <a class="c-readmore__link" href="https://www.flyingeze.com/p/municipal-election-financing-rules-alberta-ucp" data-track-region="content-read-more" title="A closer look at changes made to municipal election financing in Alberta" target="_blank">
				A closer look at changes made to municipal election financing in Alberta			</a>
		
	
<a href="https://www.edmonton.ca/city_government/municipal_elections/third-party-advertising.aspx" target="_blank">Any person, corporation or group must register</a> if they plan to spend (or receive) more than $1,000 for advertisements in support of or in opposition of a specific candidate for council or school boards.
But if people or groups focus their campaigns on issues, there are no restrictions. There&#8217;s also no maximum on what a PAC can spend.
Political scientist Chaldeans Mensah says this is something voters should pay close attention to, because of how the money may change our local political landscape.
<blockquote>&#8220;If you look at the history of PACs in the United States, they&#8217;ve contributed to the polarization of politics. I think Edmontonians should be concerned,&#8221; he said.</blockquote>
Third-party ads aren&#8217;t new at other levels of government. Provincially, there&#8217;s more than 30 listed <a href="https://www.elections.ab.ca/political-participants/third-party-advertisers/third-party-advertisers/" target="_blank">on Elections Alberta&#8217;s website.</a>
Federally, millions are spent each election, like television commercials backing one person running for prime minister over another.
READ MORE: <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/5446317/canada-election-third-party-ads/" target="_blank">Unions, other third parties to reveal ad spending as federal election nears</a>
But the provincial government is now formalizing those ads at the municipal level, something the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association was strongly opposed to.
<blockquote>&#8220;The third-party advertising rules introduced by this government open local elections to non-local issues and could allow those with the deepest pockets to influence the make-up of our communities’ elected bodies,&#8221; explained AUMA president Barry Morishita.</blockquote>
Each person, corporation, or group is allowed to donate up to $30,000 to a PAC, which experts say is big money in municipal politics.
Last election, the average winning council campaign in Edmonton cost $65,000.
&#8220;If that one person has a ton of money, they can spend it and have a ton of influence over the election &#8212; which is completely undemocratic because they&#8217;re just one voter,&#8221; explained Democracy Watch co-founder Duff Conacher.
READ MORE: <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7467101/calgarys-future-first-3rd-party-election/" target="_blank">‘Calgary’s Future’ registers as first 3rd-party group ahead of city election</a>
Mayor Don Iveson said Edmonton&#8217;s council also disagrees with the changes.
&#8220;It is disappointing to see. It is a move towards the Americanization, sadly, of our politics. I do think there needs to be rules and ways for civil society to engage, but I think those rules need to favour democracy instead of special interest.&#8221;
Councillor Andrew Knack says he&#8217;s been seeing third-party ads pop up on his social media streams for the last few months, and says the information is often misleading.
<blockquote>&#8220;The ability for them to operate with very, very limited transparency &#8212; that gives them the ability to influence elections,&#8221; he said.</blockquote>
When asked Thursday for comment on the criticisms of the new legislation, a spokesperson for the department of Municipal Affairs said a previous statement from former minister Kaycee Madu still stood, in which he said the new guidelines &#8220;will help lead to more competitive local elections and increase voter participation.”
Mensah said voters need to be savvy and think critically about the motivation behind each ad and PAC.
&#8220;We have to ask questions; who is supporting these groups? What is their agenda?&#8221;
To date, no third-party advertisers have registered in Edmonton.

Experts say voters need to exercise caution around what they’re seeing and hearing in advertisements ahead of October’s municipal election.

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Municipal elections could see big spenders try to influence voting

Elections New Brunswick has confirmed that northwestern regions that are currently in lockdown due to <a href="https://globalnews.ca/tag/covid-19/" target="_blank">COVID-19</a> will have their municipal elections suspended.
“This means that all elections, including those for municipal council, district education council and regional health authority boards in the designated area of Zone 4 that fall under the order, are temporarily suspended until such time as the lockdown is lifted,” said Municipal Elector Officer Kim Poffenroth, in a statement.
		
			Read more: <a class="c-readmore__link" href="https://www.flyingeze.com/p/edmundston-icu-capacity-strain" data-track-region="content-read-more" title="N.B. reporting nine new COVID-19 cases, Edmundston hospital experiencing ICU strain" target="_blank">
				N.B. reporting nine new COVID-19 cases, Edmundston hospital experiencing ICU strain			</a>
		
	
Voters in the affected areas will not be sent voter information cards until the lockdown has been lifted and Elections New Brunswick can rebook polling locations and train poll workers.
The suspension also means that results reporting for the rest of the province will be delayed until all of the province has had a chance to vote.
Voting day, which is scheduled for May 10, was already put over from last year due to the pandemic.
Municipalities where elections are suspended include Edmundston, Haut-Madawaska, Lac Baker, Rivière-Verte, Sainte-Anne-de-Madawaska and Saint Léonard.
The lockdown also impacts the elections for the Francophone Northwest school subdistricts 1, 2, 3 and 4 and well as Anglophone West sub-district 1.
Elections are also suspended for Vitalité Health Network subregions A3 and A4.
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Voters in the affected areas will not be sent voter information cards until the lockdown has been lifted. Continue reading →

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Edmundston

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Municipal elections suspended in Edmundston region due to COVID-19 lockdown

We chart the closest races from 2019 and use those results to get a sense of which ridings will be targeted by which parties if we have a federal election this year. Continue reading →

44th General Election

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NOTEBOOK:  A first look at Canada’s next federal election battlegrounds

Texas appeared on Thursday to become the next flash point on politically charged issues in Corporate America after legislation passed by the state Senate to limit voting access prompted a rebuke from American Airlines.
&#8220;We are strongly opposed to this bill and others like it,&#8221; Fort Worth, Texas-based American said in a statement.
		
			Read more: <a class="c-readmore__link" href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7732757/georgia-voting-coca-cola-delta/" data-track-region="content-read-more" title="Georgia companies Coca-Cola, Delta join others in blasting state&#8217;s new voting law">
				Georgia companies Coca-Cola, Delta join others in blasting state&#8217;s new voting law			</a>
		
	
The legislation, which is now set to go before the Texas House of Representatives, would eliminate drive-through voting, limit polling site hours and give partisan poll watchers more autonomy.
Southwest Airlines, also based in Texas, declined to say if it opposed the legislation but said: &#8220;We believe every voter should have a fair opportunity to let their voice be heard. This right is essential to our nation’s success.&#8221;
The Texas effort drew sharp criticism from voting rights advocates and Democrats in the state, who argue that the legislation would make it more difficult for Texans, particularly those of colour, to cast ballots.
The state already has some of the most stringent voting laws in the country, according to election experts. A state House of Representatives committee on Thursday was holding a hearing on a companion bill that would impose other voting restrictions.
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Texas is one of several states, including Georgia, Florida, Arizona and Iowa, where Republican lawmakers have pursued new voting limits after former U.S. President Donald Trump falsely blamed his November loss on widespread voter fraud despite no evidence.
Republican lawmakers say the law is needed to ensure public confidence in election integrity.
The comments by American and Southwest came after Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola on Wednesday joined a growing number of companies that challenged the state of Georgia&#8217;s new voting restrictions.
Delta CEO Ed Bastian blasted the law on Wednesday in a reversal from an initial statement last week that sparked a popular backlash.
		
			Read more: <a class="c-readmore__link" href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7720740/georgia-gop-election-law/" data-track-region="content-read-more" title="Georgia passes new state elections law backed by GOP">
				Georgia passes new state elections law backed by GOP			</a>
		
	
But his new stance drew condemnation from Georgia&#8217;s Republican Governor Brian Kemp and many Republicans, including Senator Marco Rubio who questioned why Delta criticized Georgia but not China.
&#8220;Far too many multinational corporations are too eager to make their voices heard on the woke issues of the day in the United States, but remain stunningly silent, or in Delta’s case, complicit, in real, ongoing atrocities in countries like China.&#8221; Rubio wrote.
Delta did not immediately comment on Rubio&#8217;s letter.
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The Georgia House late Wednesday voted to repeal a jet fuel sales tax break that Delta uses but the state Senate did not act on it before the legislative session adjourned.
Kemp told Fox Business he thought the tax issue was &#8220;moot&#8221; now that the legislature had adjourned.

“We are strongly opposed to this bill and others like it,” Fort Worth, Texas-based American said in a statement. Continue reading →

American Airlines opposes voting restriction bill in Texas

New Brunswick has introduced legislation that would allow the suspension of candidate nominations and voting in the May 10 municipal elections if there is a lockdown due to a <a href="http://globalnews.ca/tag/covid-19">COVID-19</a> outbreak.
Introduced today, the legislation would allow the municipal electoral officer to halt voting in any of the province&#8217;s seven health zones.
In a news release, Local Government Minister Daniel Allain says the arrival of a more contagious variant in the province makes it clear that a process is needed to temporarily suspend nominations and voting if required.
		
			Read more: <a class="c-readmore__link" href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7704930/new-brunswick-cluster-unknown-brain-disease/" data-track-region="content-read-more" title="N.B. health officials tracking cluster of patients with unknown brain disease">
				N.B. health officials tracking cluster of patients with unknown brain disease			</a>
		
	
Under An Act Respecting Municipal General Elections in 2021, the municipal electoral officer would have to ensure that the electoral process and activities related to the election resume within 30 days after the date that a lockdown ends in a health region.
Reporting of results from health zones not affected by the lockdown would also be halted until all voters provincewide have cast ballots and the results have been tabulated.
Legislation passed last December gave the municipal electoral officer the flexibility to adapt or modify certain voting procedures, but it did not include the ability to suspend voting.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 19, 2021.
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Local government minister says the arrival of a more contagious variant makes it clear that a process is needed to temporarily suspend nominations and voting if required. Continue reading →

Bill allows voting halt in New Brunswick municipal elections for COVID-19 outbreak

Victories notwithstanding, the 2020 election blew up many of the assumptions Democrats have long held about the American electorate.
In Florida, Arizona and elsewhere, Latino voters broke for Trump in unexpected numbers, upending conventional wisdom that the growing Spanish-speaking population will reliably vote the same way — and vote blue. Polling again failed to capture contours of races around the country, proving that pollsters&#8217; inability to predict Trump&#8217;s 2016 win wasn&#8217;t a fluke. And with all eyes on Texas, Georgia flipped blue for the first time in two decades.
Tatenda Musapatike, a former political ad specialist at Facebook who left the company in 2019 to lead civic engagement campaigns, believes that the relative tabula rasa in American politics right now is an opportunity to double down on expanding the electorate.
This month, Musapatike is leaving her role directing campaigns at the <a href="https://www.axios.com/democrats-digital-campaign-donald-trump-acronym-45c6165d-0dcc-45b6-a9de-8651d50a888a.html">Democratic nonprofit Acronym</a> to launch the Voter Formation Project, a 501(c)3 laser-focused on reaching Black and brown first-time voters using every trick in the digital toolbox.
One answer to Trump&#8217;s surprise win in 2016, Acronym emerged as a nonprofit strategy group aiming to lay a Democratic digital groundwork that could match or surpass Republican digital campaigns.
The group stumbled in 2020 when an untested and probably ill-advised vote tabulation app <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/5/21123009/acronym-tara-mcgowan-shadow-app-iowa-caucus-results">delayed results in the Iowa caucuses</a>, creating chaos and casting doubt on the Democratic party&#8217;s technical prowess. The app was created by Shadow, a tech company<a href="https://twitter.com/anotheracronym/status/1085934845942026241?lang=en"> Acronym acquired the year prior</a> but then scrambled to distance itself from.
But Acronym had a lot of irons in the fire. One of those was a 2019 voter drive called the <a href="https://www.anotheracronym.org/peoples-power-grab/">&#8220;People&#8217;s Power Grab&#8221;</a> led by Musapatike that mobilized unregistered voters of color in Arizona, Texas, Florida and Georgia.
With the Voter Formation Project, Musapatike can both extend and hone the same work. And with Georgia as a proof-of-concept and major legislative voting rights reform on the table, the political stakes of that mission are clearer than ever.
Musapatike is well-positioned for the task at hand. Prior to her work on voter outreach at Acronym, she spent five years at Facebook working with progressive super PACs and nonprofits on their digital ad campaigns. (Mired in myriad political controversies following the 2016 U.S. election, including accusations that the company gave the Trump campaign special treatment, Facebook <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-scale-back-embeds-political-campaigns-n911701">dissolved those teams</a>.)
Musapatike told TechCrunch that the Voter Formation Project will fill an existing gap for digital-only voter outreach in at least a few ways. For one, it will be the first digital-only operation helmed by a Black woman in the space. Its mission is also uniquely targeted and the organization will be looking to raise at least $4 million this year to make it happen.
&#8220;I&#8217;m really excited about the sea change that we&#8217;re seeing in terms of valuing the work, and trusting Black women to do the work,&#8221; Musapatike said.
Practically, the Voter Formation Project will look like a lot of digital advertising. Musapatike believes that by embracing the chaos of so many upended assumptions, she can reach more first time voters from communities of color.
&#8220;Oftentimes, I think a lot of groups that do digital work predominantly focus on either young people or individual communities of color,&#8221; she said. &#8220;We&#8217;re really focused on the digital piece, and then targeting people of color to figure out what works for our different communities.&#8221;
But it won&#8217;t all be ads. Musapatike expects digital advertising to be half of the fledgling group&#8217;s budget in its first year, but also emphasizes the need for digital training and education for other voter outreach programs, particularly smaller ones at the state level and other organizations with more traditional in-person operations that lack the resources for deep digital expertise.

<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="X747Wl7oY1"><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/13/voteamerica-launch-debra-cleaver-vote-org/">Vote.org founder launches VoteAmerica, a nonprofit using tech tools to help Americans vote by mail</a></blockquote>

Around the time she was leaving Facebook, Musapatike started thinking about how ad operations targeting first-time voters were stuck repeating the same patterns.
&#8220;We saw the same type of assumptions about what moved people, what inspired people, what got people to register being repeated,&#8221; Musapatike said. &#8220;I rarely had the opportunity to see really different and experimental thought coming to campaigns. And I wanted to be able to run the campaigns that I dreamed about in my head.&#8221;
One example is the belief that ads seeking to register new voters should look kind of dry and official, like they might have come from the government itself.
Her teams ran tests of &#8220;official-looking&#8221; ads against what she calls &#8220;culturally relevant&#8221; ads that looked like organic content anyone might run into on social media, with a careful eye to be sure the people featured in the more modern ads looked and spoke like the communities being targeted. They found that the official-looking ads indeed resonated more with older voters, but younger people of color were much more likely to register to vote when targeted with the culturally relevant ads.
&#8220;And so that said to us we need to do a lot more digging into what works for who, and not necessarily say that same tactic works for everyone, because we just don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s true or not,&#8221; Musapatike said.
Democrats could wait patiently for for shifting demographics to move the country left — or they could get experimental in order to tap into a powerful well of potential votes sitting out in the open. Pockets of unregistered voters are particularly concentrated in the South, and the Voter Formation Project names Texas and Virginia as two states of particular interest.
&#8220;These are places where we have failed in elections that are occurring either at the municipal or the state level,&#8221; Musapatike said, pointing out that while the South appears to skew heavily conservative, it&#8217;s also the region most afflicted by efforts to disenfranchise voters.
&#8220;For that we are running programs in states where there are disproportionately fewer people of color voting compared to their older, whiter counterparts,&#8221; Musapatike said. &#8220;Because once those people have access to voting, it could change the outcomes.&#8221;
Asked if she has any qualms about pumping advertising dollars into a social media platforms that are known to amplify voter suppression efforts and other strains of political misinformation, Musapatike was crystal clear. &#8220;I just don&#8217;t believe in bringing a knife to a gunfight,&#8221; she said.
In the 2020 presidential race, Democrats prevailed by around 12,000 votes in Georgia. For state and local elections, even small bumps in the voting population can have a huge impact. To that end, from day one, the Voter Formation Project is setting out with a measurable goal: to register and mobilize half a million voters before the 2022 midterm elections.
&#8220;When there are a significant amount of people who don&#8217;t have access to the ballot box, [elections] are no longer a fair contest of ideas,&#8221; Musapatike said. &#8220;It becomes a game of suppression, which is not what the United States is about.&#8221;

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Victories notwithstanding, the 2020 election blew up many of the assumptions Democrats have long held about the American electorate. In Florida, Arizona and elsewhere, Latino voters broke for Trump in unexpected numbers, upending conventional wisdom that the growing Spanish-speaking population will reliably vote the same way — and vote blue. Polling again failed to capture […]

The Voter Formation Project puts an experimental spin on reaching Black and brown first-time voters

With the next municipal election a little over eight months away, Edmontonians are already throwing their names into the hat for a seat in council chambers.
So what does it take to be a city councillor? Dedication, for one.
&#8220;This work is not easy,&#8221; Ward 9 councillor Tim Cartmell said. &#8220;It&#8217;s a 70-hour-a-week thing.&#8221;
&#8220;Ordinarily you&#8217;d be going to events at the lunch hour, you&#8217;d be going to events before you started in the morning, go to breakfasts. You might even be going to evening eventso (or events) on the weekends,&#8221; Ward 5 councillor Sarah Hamilton explained.
While council and committee meetings are often what people think of when it comes to the role of a councillor, there&#8217;s a lot of work behind the scenes too.
<blockquote>&#8220;It&#8217;s a little bit like going to school. You don&#8217;t just go to class, you end up doing a lot of homework,&#8221; Hamilton said.</blockquote>
Coun. Bev Esslinger has represented Ward 2 since 2013, when she was one of six new faces on council.
&#8220;There&#8217;s really a strong learning curve when you first come in,&#8221; she said.
READ MORE: <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7594853/edmontons-city-council-municipal-election-lookahead/">Face of Edmonton’s city council to change with new mayor, councillors come fall election</a>
But she said the more senior councillors stepped up to show the newbies the ropes, and she would like to repay the favour.
&#8220;There is orientation but there&#8217;s nothing like having someone you can ask the questions of,&#8221; Esslinger said.
<blockquote>&#8220;&#8216;What would you do about this? How would you handle it?'&#8221;</blockquote>
Despite the challenges, more than 20 Edmontonians have already registered as a candidate for council.
<a href="https://www.edmonton.ca/city_government/municipal_elections/nomination-process.aspx">The only requirements</a> are that you&#8217;re a Canadian citizen, at least 18 years old and have lived in Edmonton for at least six months.
&#8220;The opportunity to have new people involved and new ideas and new perspectives is always refreshing,&#8221; Cartmell said.
The makeup of council is sure to change come the fall. For one thing, <a href="https://www.edmonton.ca/city_government/municipal_elections/civic-election-maps.aspx">the ward names</a> and <a href="https://www.edmonton.ca/city_government/documents/PDF/Citywide_Ward_Map.pdf">boundaries are all changing</a>.
READ MORE: <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7342870/12-edmonton-wards-indigenous-names/">12 Indigenous names for updated Edmonton wards proposed</a>
In addition to that, Mayor Don Iveson and councillors Scott McKeen and Michael Walters won&#8217;t be seeking re-election, so their seats are open for the taking.
&#8220;There&#8217;s going to be a lot of open wards, and I know a lot of candidates are going to flock to those thinking it&#8217;s going to be easier,&#8221; Ward 3 councillor, Jon Dziadyk explained.
To that point, two ridings &#8212; Métis and papastew &#8212; each already have a handful of candidates officially in the running.
Other ridings, however, like Nakota Isga and Anirniq, have no candidates registered yet.
There is paperwork that needs to be filled out, and it costs $100 to register.
But contrary to some perceptions, you don&#8217;t need a huge bankroll to win.
Last election, Dziadyk knocked off incumbent Dave Loken after only collecting a few hundred dollars in donations.
Dziadyk contributed some of his own money to the campaign, spending less than $10,000 total to get elected.
He said his winning strategy was knocking on thousands of doors.
<blockquote>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t come from the upper echelons of society,&#8221; the councillor said. &#8220;I wasn&#8217;t interconnected with all the different organizations that are commonplace in Edmonton. I was just a person with ideas.&#8221;</blockquote>
One of the registration forms requires signatures of support from 25 eligible voters.
But perhaps the best way to decide if you&#8217;re interested in a run for municipal office is to get acquainted with how it all works.
&#8220;Watch a meeting, listen to the issues that get discussed,&#8221; Hamilton suggested.
<blockquote>&#8220;Write questions that you could ask. Talk to current or former city councillors about what their experience is.&#8221;</blockquote>
Nomination papers can be filed in person with an appointment with Elections Edmonton, or via mail.
The election is set to take place on Oct. 18.

With the next municipal election a little over eight months away, Edmontonians are already throwing their names into the hat for a seat in council chambers. Continue reading →

Interested in running for Edmonton’s city council? Councillors have some advice

“It should be the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of 2020,” Clyburn said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “That’s the way to do it. Words may be powerful, but deeds are lasting.”


Reps. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) also echoed this sentiment in interviews on Sunday morning and called for swift passage of the legislation, called the Voting Rights Advancement Act. The House in 2019 passed the legislation, which would restore key protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court struck down in 2013.


Lewis died on Friday night, months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, at a pivotal moment for race relations in the United States. Protesters in cities from coast to coast are demanding widespread reforms in the wake of the May 25 police killing of George Floyd, a black man. Meanwhile, coronavirus cases are surging in states nationwide, shedding fresh light on the inequities black Americans encounter in health care.


Clyburn also called for the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., to be renamed in honor of Lewis, a lifelong friend.


The bridge, named after a former Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader, became a critical site during the civil rights movement. On Bloody Sunday in 1965, Alabama state troopers beat peaceful demonstrators there, including Lewis, who suffered a fractured skull.


“Edmund Pettus was a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan,” Clyburn said during an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.” “Take his name off that bridge and replace it with a good man, John Lewis, the personification of the goodness of America, rather than to honor someone who disrespected individual freedoms.”


Recent protests have prompted cities nationwide to reconsider monuments and other honors granted to people with ties to the Confederacy or other racist legacies. An online petition to rename the bridge in Lewis’s honor was drafted last month and has gained more than 450,000 signatures.


Lewis’s death comes amid accusations that Trump has frequently sought to foment racial divisions in the United States as Election Day approaches, rather than unite the country. Trump <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1284549896389955585?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">did tweet a message</a> of sympathy and prayers on Saturday about the Georgia congressman, who was one of the most vocal critics of the president’s policies and rhetoric in Congress.


Pressley, appearing on CNN, said she wished Trump didn’t tweet at all.


“If you really want to honor the life of John Lewis, you don’t do things like gut the fair-housing laws,” she said on CNN. “You don’t sow the seeds of division.”


Pressley said she was a “beneficiary” of Lewis’s activism. “There would be no Ayanna Pressley and countless others were it not for John Lewis,” she said.


Many leaders on Sunday spoke of Lewis’s impact on Congress, where he was known as a moral compass for both parties in an increasingly divided political environment.


“There is a need for more John Lewises,” Colin Powell, a former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Not just one, but many. We got a lot of work to do. ”


In Atlanta, mourners gathered Saturday at the site of a 65-foot-tall mural depicting Lewis. The mural has stood in the Sweet Auburn district — the beating heart of the city’s black business community during the days of segregation — for years. A steady stream of visitors stopped by Saturday to drop off flowers or notes, take pictures, or simply stand and look on.


Bouquets, posters and handwritten messages were left at the site. Some of them had simple messages such as “silence equals violence” and “love one another,” while others shared deeply personal stories of encounters with the congressman or recollections of how he served as an inspiration.


Sisters Saundra Howard Jackson and Lorna Howard also were moved to pay a visit to the mural on Saturday. They live in nearby Decatur but, like Lewis, originally hail from Alabama. They are planning to visit the Edmund Pettus Bridge and hope to see it renamed for Lewis.


“Something in me moved,” Lorna Howard said about hearing of Lewis’s death. She hasn’t left her house much since the pandemic began but made an exception to pay tribute to him.


“They’ve left us,” said Lorna Howard, referring not only to Lewis but also C.T. Vivian and Joseph Lowery. “Those civil rights icons have passed. Who is going to take the baton now? Who is going to keep it going?”


Lewis was just 23 when he delivered his famous speech at the March on Washington in 1963. Many mourners expressed hope that a new generation of leaders emerges from the wave of protests that swept the United States in recent weeks.


“Lewis started out when he was a student — 17, 18 years old,” Howard Jackson said. “The movement struck a chord with him to endure, to get to meet Doctor King. He had the spirit. It took people like him to be courageous and lead peaceful protests to get things changed.”

“It should be the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of 2020,” Clyburn said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “That’s the way to do it. Words may be powerful, but deeds are lasting.” Reps. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) also echoed this sentiment in interviews on Sunday morning and called for swift […] More

Democrats demand voting rights expansion in memory of John Lewis

In NBA history, nine teams had a net rating of at least +10 — outscoring teams by 10 points per 100 possessions — over the course of an NBA season. Eight of those nine teams won the NBA title, the ninth was the 2016 Golden State Warriors that won 73 games but blew a 3-1 lead in the Finals.
The 2019-20 Milwaukee Bucks are the 10th team to reach that mark, +10.7 through March 11 when the NBA was shut down.
Yet there are doubts around the league that these Bucks can win the title. It’s because we saw the Boston Celtics two years ago, and then the Toronto Raptors last playoffs, block off Giannis Antetokounmpo’s path to the rim, forcing the Bucks to go to a Plan B and their role players to step up. They didn’t. Those Milwaukee teams fell short of reaching the NBA Finals.
Are these Bucks different?
It feels like they are. This looks like a team ready to take the next step.
If not, an offseason of speculation about the future of Antetokounmpo in Milwaukee — he is eligible to sign a supermax extension this offseason and the Bucks will offer it — will begin.
<h4>MILWAUKEE’S DEPTH</h4>
Everything with the Bucks starts with Antetokounmpo — a man about to be a back-to-back MVP winner and likely will join Michael Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon as the only players to win MVP and Defensive Player of the Year in the same season. Antetokounmpo averaged 29.6 points with ridiculous 60.8 percent true shooting while grabbing 13.7 rebounds and dishing out 5.8 assists per game. Every team has a game plan to stop him, nobody does.
The Bucks are far from a one-man show, however.
Milwaukee was +4.1 points per 100 this season when Antetokounmpo was off the court (which was a fair amount, the Greek Freak averaged fewer than 31 minutes a game). That rating would have been seventh-best in the NBA this season — a top 10 team even without the league’s MVP stepping on the court. While the Bucks were +3.1 a season ago when Antetokounmpo sat, this team has looked better without their leader despite the loss of Malcolm Brogdon in the offseason.
Khris Middleton is still playing at an All-Star — maybe All-NBA — level averaging 21.1 points a game and shooting 41.8% from three, while playing elite defense. Behind him was Eric Bledsoe at 15.4 points game, the player whose improved play this season largely covered up the loss of Brogdon. Critical to making it all work is Brook Lopez, who will get well deserved Defensive Player of the Year votes and scored 11 points a game (he seems to be past the shooting woes from three that plagued him during the season).
Beyond that core, Wesley Matthews has looked strong in the Bucks’ Orlando scrimmages, Donte DiVincenzo made huge strides and played well this season, and George Hill was critical in locking down the second unit. Then there is Pat Connaughton — reportedly recovered from the coronavirus and in Orlando quarantining — and sharpshooter Kyle Korver.
<h4>MILWAUKEE’S DEFENSE</h4>
What makes these Bucks different is their defense — best in the league by far with a defensive rating of 101.6. They lock teams down.
Milwaukee had the best defense in the NBA a season ago, too, but this campaign they are 3.3 points per 100 better than that team — a huge improvement.
The Bucks defensive strategy is straightforward: wall off the paint. The Bucks allowed the fewest shots at the rim in the league and the fewest points in the paint. Milwaukee takes away the easy buckets at the rim.
Milwaukee also is quick to contest corner threes and take those away — they can defend the paint and the corner because of the length and athleticism on the roster.
What Milwaukee gives up are midrange shots and threes above the break — the statistically least dangerous shots in the league. They will live with those.
It works, especially with the length and athleticism of the Bucks. The concern is that the best teams in the NBA — starting with the Celtics in the East, plus the teams likely to come out of the West — take and make those shots.
<h4>WHAT’S MILWAUKEE’S PLAN B</h4>
Milwaukee checks all the boxes of a team headed to the NBA Finals and a title contender: MVP player, depth and versatility, elite defense. This has been the best team in the NBA this season for good reason.
But come the Eastern Conference Finals and NBA Finals, when the other best teams in the league have the talent to limit what the Bucks have done all season to win games, will the role players be able to step up and execute Plan B.
Will coach Mike Budenholzer be willing to go to that plan, and maybe even play Antetokounmpo more than 40 minutes a game. Last season, in a six-game series with the Raptors, Antetokounmpo still averaged just 38.5 minutes a game — “If we can’t win with Giannis at 40, 40.5 (minutes), then Toronto deserves it,” Budenholzer said.
No. When you have the MVP, that series is when you lean on him. The Bucks didn’t do that enough.
This feels like the Bucks’ year. This year feels like the season Milwaukee is back in the NBA Finals.
If not, the offseason of Antetokounmpo speculation will begin.

In NBA history, nine teams had a net rating of at least +10 — outscoring teams by 10 points per 100 possessions — over the course of an NBA season. Eight of those nine teams won the NBA title, the ninth was the 2016 Golden State Warriors that won 73 games but blew a 3-1 […] More

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