Following CivicCamp’s efforts around the PlanIt debate, many individuals and organizations have been looking to CivicCamp to provide leadership around the 2010 Calgary Municipal Election. The Governance Cabin accepted this responsibility and have committed to undertaking the following projects leading up to the October 18, 2010 election day.
CivicCamp will be an honest broker for the 2010 Calgary Municipal Election. We will be non-partisan and not favour one candidate over another. Instead our goal is to increase citizen engagement by helping eliminate traditional barriers to becoming an informed voter.
What is CivicCamp doing for the 2010 elections?
1. About the Candidates.
CivicCamper Grant Neufeld has created CalgaryDemocracy.ca, an online portal where voters may learn more about all the candidates, find contact details, and submit information that may be missing. CivicCamp will continue to support CalgaryDemocracy.ca by helping keep the site current and by directing all voters to it as their primary source of candidate information.
2. Candidate Surveys.
For the first time ever in Calgary voters will help decide what questions should be asked of candidates. Voters are encouraged to visit civiccamp.uservoice.com to suggest questions and to vote for questions you would most like to have answered. This will ensure the CivicCamp survey reflects the thoughts and concerns of Calgarians as a whole, rather than only one special interest group.
These crowd-sourced questions will be provided to candidates on nomination day and will be used during election forums. All answers from candidates will be posted on our website once they are returned.
3. Candidate Forums.
CivicCamp is committed to organizing a candidate forum for the mayoral and aldermanic races during the lead up to the election. Requests for venues have recently been sent out to community associations, however if you have a venue you’d be willing to provide, please contact Peter Rishaug at prishaug@shaw.ca. Organizing 15 forums in a two and a half week period will be no easy task, so if you would like to volunteer at one or more of forums please contact Jody Rechenmacher at jodyrechenmacher@gmail.com.
Stay tuned to CivicCamp.org for the dates of each forum.
4. Campaign Issues of Concern to CivicCampers.
CivicCamp will shortly be sending surveys to CivicCampers to gather information about what issues matter to them. The results of this survey will be made available to all candidates and voters to read about what CivicCampers would like to see candidates do during and after the election.
Please spread the word and visit CivicCamp.org/2010election for more information as it becomes available.
