Xanthippa's Chamberpot

…as I am working to set up a new blog on which I will post the responses which I received from the Ottawa Municipal Elections 2010 candidates – responses to the questions I had sent them.

Why?

Because I have never seen this many people actively taking an active part in the democratic process of election – especially on the municipal level!  THIS IS AWESOME!

These people deserve all the help they can get in getting their message across:  especially the newcomers to the political world.

For those unfamiliar with the Ottawa municipal scene:  during the last election, the people of Ottawa had elected a maverick-of-a-mayor, a newcomer to the political scene, in order to ‘bring about change.  But, being the cautious folk we are, we had elected every single City Councilor who ran for re-election – the very crowd that had built the status quo and loved it!

Exactly….

This election, we are seeing a definite change:  at no time in my memory have so many ‘ordinary’ folk from all walks of life (read, not just ‘professional politicians’ and lawyers) and running both for the position of Mayor as well as for the City Council.

So many, in fact, they are getting ‘drowned out’!

With over a hundred people running, it is difficult for mainstream media to give us in-depth analysis of each candidate (provided their ‘impartial reporting’ would actually do more good than harm) – so, an pre-canned sound-bite here and there is about the best coverage most of the candidates are likely to get.  (CFRA is trying – but, there is only so much coverage one lone radio station can give.)

How is a three-second cookie-cutter sound-bite supposed to tell us who the different candidates are and what they stand for?

Well, if they were willing to put in the effort to run, the least I should do is to provide them an opportunity to differentiate themselves.  So, I emailed each and every one of the candidates which lists an email address my email interview questions.  Over 120 of them.

For those who do not, I posted the questions here – they are free to get them, fill out the questions and submit them to me.  Either, they can do so as a comment, or they can send me a comment with their email address and I’ll contact without publishing the comment with their private info.

Since the very first ‘full’ reply got most of the answers ‘perfectly right’, I fell uncomfortable about publishing the results as they come in:  the later- answerers would have the benefit of becoming ‘enlightened’ by this one particular set of answers (NOT from a front-runner – YET!).

So, instead, I will set up a page for the Mayoralty race and a separate page for each Ward, in which I’ll list all the candidates, their websites (provided they took less than 5 minutes on Google to find:  with 0ver 140 candidates….but if ANYONE knows a website link I missed, please let me know and I’ll add it), their response to my questions (I say ‘response’, because some of them are honest, well thought out answers while others range from very polite questions of their own to not so polite PFO’s from their underlings).

I may (or may not) also note official endorsements and ‘slates’.  But, as I am an Aspie (and therefore very slow at this because I tend to get sidetracked….I have the attention span of a gnat on antihistemines), I have already put well over a hundred hours to setting it up, so, as they say, we’ll see!

So, that is ‘coming soon’.

Until the construction is done, blogging here will be light…

Thank you for your patience.