Caricatures of Susan Anton and Gregor Robertson by campaigners for finance reform.

Vancouver voters often take it for granted that big campaign cheque-writers pull the strings in council meetings.

“You can’t get into office [in this city] unless you have big money behind you,” said Eric Hamilton-Smith, an Occupy Vancouver activist who studied politics at Simon Fraser University.

In an effort to change that, there have been repeated demands for fundamental election reforms over the years.

This year, concerns over campaign spending led the Occupy Vancouver movement to issue a challenge to candidates to reveal their donors on the eve of the election. And several independent candidates adopted voluntary election spending limits, making the issue a key plank in their campaigns.

The big donors

More than $5 million was spent by candidates for Vision Vancouver and the Non-Partisan Association (NPA) alone in the November 2008 election. The biggest donors were real estate developers, corporations, and unions, according to an analysis of public records published by the Vancouver Sun in late April 2009.

The city charter places no limits on the total amount a party can spend on a campaign, and an individual can write as big a cheque as they wish.

All donations to political parties and individuals must be submitted to the city clerk within 120 days after voting ends. The reports, submitted on paper, become public records retained for seven years. Thus, critics base their objections on data from the 2008 election.

The perception that donors with business before the city receive favourable treatment moved Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver, and their mayoral candidate Randy Helten, to refuse corporate donations.

“Those in power have to reverse-engineer their decisions to satisfy their financial supporters,” he said. “What we would like to see is a separation of the regulated and the regulators, so that council can really work in the public interest.”

Despite their belief that these donations drive political decision-making in Vancouver, none of the campaign finance critics interviewed for this story were able to offer up evidence of a single vote that was swayed by a particular donation.

Notably, however, the city charter doesn’t require abstaining when conflicts of interest due to campaign donations arise.

Current Vision councillor and candidate Geoff Meggs reflected on the issue in a recent interview with the Mainlander website.

“I think [developers] want access, and a relationship with councillors, absolutely,” he was quoted as saying. “They want to make sure that they get a fair hearing, although there’s not an expectation, in my experience, that they will necessarily get what they want in a particular project.”

Limiting on campaign money

This may be the last municipal election without restrictions on financing. The province has drawn up plans to standardize the rules governing elections in all of the B.C. municipalities and to set caps on spending.

The public strongly supports rewriting the municipal election financing rules.

Last year, Mayor Gregor Robertson and the Vision-majority council wrote to the provincial task force on local government elections reform asking for similar restrictions.

Tasked with crafting province-wide changes to municipal elections laws, the group weighed the Vancouver council’s opinion along with nearly 1,000 other submissions from cities, organizations, and individuals. Campaign finance was one of the top concerns in the flood of feedback.

The task force issued a set of 31 recommendations for a proposed Local Government Elections Act in 2010. But the measure foundered in Victoria, and the changes have been postponed until 2014.

“The intent was to get this done before these [2011] elections,” said Clayton Whitman, a Canadian election law expert who writes on the topic at democracylawblog.ca. “Then the HST hit and basically blew a year-long hole in BC politics. Elections BC couldn’t have done anything if you had wanted them [to], really.”

The task force debated putting pre-election reporting into the bill, but in the end only recommended moving the deadline to 90 days post-election, standardizing the reports, and posting them online in a single database managed by Elections BC.

Many people and organizations had backed pre-election disclosure in their letters to the task force, but the issue didn’t raise enough concern to justify placing big bookkeeping burdens on smaller campaigns or to risk making too many changes at once, according to the report.

“There’s definitely people saying we should know who’s financing our political parties before we make our decision,” said Whitman. “But I think that is more of a long shot in terms of what you’ll see in any municipal government election reform.”

‘Disclosure now!’

Graffiti on the windows of NPA campaign headquarters. One Occupy Vancouver marcher was arrested after the incident.

Not content to wait for the new act, the general assembly of the Occupy Vancouver movement recently challenged all Vancouver council and mayoral candidates to disclose their 2011 donations by November 18, or “face the music on Election Day.”

The challenge also expressed support for limiting overall spending, placing caps on what a single donor can give, and banning donations from outside of B.C. and from corporations and unions.

Occupy Vancouver organizer Eric Hamilton-Smith said all independent candidates, the Green Party of Vancouver, and NSV responded. COPE Councilor and candidate Ellen Woodsworth attempted to assemble a disclosure, but missed the deadline.

“The only two parties completely defiant were NPA and Vision,” said Hamilton-Smith. “We’ve got a direct action planned today to call them out on the fact that they’ve been bought by corporations.”

“Until you can find a way to legislate the removal of money from politics,” said Hamilton-Smith, “we’ll never know whether a city can be run with the interests of its people in mind as opposed to the big business that’s financing their campaigns.”

Fact file: Municipal election changes set for 2014

Premier Gordon Campbell in 2009 announced a new effort to modernize and harmonize the municipal elections laws across British Columbia. The province formed a task force composed of the president and two delegates of the Union of British Columbia Municipalities, two MLAs, and the Minister of Community and Rural Development, Bill Bennett.

The group collected data and opinions over several months. Their final report, issued late May 2010, made 31 recommendations drawn from the thousands of opinions submitted by B.C. municipalities, organizations, academics and citizens. Although finished on time, more than a year before the 2011 campaign season, the recommendations never made it into a legislative bill.

Whistler-based election law expert Clayton Whitman predicts that a bill incorporating the reforms will be introduced early in 2012, in time to pass a law covering the 2014 municipal elections.

“I think there’s a broad consensus that something should, and is going to, be done,” he said. “They spent a lot of money and time on that report and there’s broad agreement on most of the parts of the report, but it’s a long and drawn out process.”

Most of the following recommendations received widespread support and will raise few objections in the legislature:

1. Registration of third-party advertisers and disclosure of their spending.
   All ads will state who paid for it to be published.
2. A separate act to set rules for campaign finance in local elections.
3. A new Elections B.C.-run database of campaign finance disclosures,
   to be published online 90 days after the election.
4. A ban on anonymous contributions, and caps on overall spending by
   candidates, elector organizations, and third-party advertisers.
5. Granting Elections BC the power to manage and enforce campaign finance rules in local elections.

Several proposed reforms were considered and rejected by the task force:

1. Limits on the size of individual or corporate campaign contributions.
2. Public financing of local elections.
3. Pre-election disclosure of campaign donors
4. Reinstating any form of corporate or business votes in local elections.

The city provides programming in a variety of languages for South Vancouver residents.

Hundal was the only South Asian candidate elected in the 2008 municipal election and is not running this year.

He said that under the current system, in theory, every councillor, Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation commissioner, and school board trustee could be living on the same street somewhere in the city’s West End.

“To me, that’s not democratic,” said Hundal, now the provincial NDP candidate for Surrey-Tynehead.

On Nov. 19, voters will elect multiple representatives for the entire city, choosing 27 people from a list of 94 candidates.

Caroline Andrew, a professor at the University of Ottawa specializing in municipal politics, argues that at-large voting disadvantages minorities and groups of lower socioeconomic standing.

Historically, these groups tend to vote less so their interests are less represented in council, said Andrew.

She added that more affluent people also have more financial resources for a city-wide campaign.  Furthermore, minorities often live in concentrated enclaves and have interests particular to their communities.

In her view, a ward system would limit the size of electoral districts and thus the amount of money needed to campaign, link a smaller group of voters directly to their representatives, and ensure local representation.

“If Canada had an at-large electoral system at the federal level, provinces like BC would reject it,” said Andrew, explaining that Ontario and Quebec would be the most represented and that the resulting government might neglect the interests of other provinces.

Even though at-large systems force all municipal officials to be accountable to the entire city, she questioned whether representatives are aware of the diverse interests in a community of which they are not residents.

Discouraged from participation

Naresh Shukla knows many of his customers by name.

Past municipal candidates from Fraserview in South Vancouver have called the system discouraging for minorities.

“In my neighbourhood, I do a lot of volunteer work.  People know me,” said Naresh Shukla, sliding his 2008 park board candidate’s business card across the sales counter of his shop in the Punjabi market.

“But when you’re elected from the whole of Vancouver, it’s very hard to get elected if you’re a minority.”

A business owner and local activist, he came last among the Non-Partisan Association candidates for the park board.

“If I run for park board, for councillor, I don’t have a chance. I’m wasting my time.”

Gabby Kalaw, NPA candidate for the park board and among the first Filipino candidates to run for local public office, said that city council fails to represent ethnic diversity because newcomers are often not familiar enough with the process to participate.

“It’s just a lack of knowledge and engagement.  You can’t blame the government or the election system.  [The lack of participation] happens not just with minorities but anyone who moves to a new place,” he said.

No perfect system

2008-2011 Vancouver municipal representatives' geographic distribution. Carol Gibson and George Chow not represented on map.

Supporters of the at-large system argue that wards cause competition and bickering between neighbourhoods within the city and might politicize certain groups, creating social cleavages where there were none before.

However, Andrews said that keeping what amounts to barriers to representation is not the solution.

Aaron Jasper, park board chairman standing for re-election, supports a mixed system and said that while a ward system would improve local representation, it would produce its own set of challenges.

According to Andrew, electoral systems reflect the representational priorities of voters and it is up to Vancouver residents to determine what those priorities are.

Hundal said that ultimately council must be responsive to broad interests.

“At the end of the day, it’s not about electing a Chinese candidate or a South Asian candidate, it’s about local democracy.  We need to ensure that we have local representation.”

Fact file: Electoral reform

• Vancouver had a ward system until 1936, when a public referendum with a turnout of 19% changed the city’s electoral system to an at-large system with 68% per cent approval.  Since then, Vancouver has elected candidates at-large.
• Over the ensuing decades, the City of Vancouver developed.  Businesses and the population grew and demographics changed.
• In 2004, city council appointed judge Thomas Berger as commissioner in a public inquiry to consider the merits of moving from the present at-large system to a ward system or some combination of the two.
• After holding public forums and collecting survey data on the issue, as well as conducting academic research in the field and drawing on the experience of other Canadian cities, Berger’s report recommended that Vancouver move to wards while continuing to elect the mayor and park board commissioners city-wide.
• In a plebiscite with 22.6 per cent turnout of registered voters, 54 per cent voted against replacing the at-large system with wards in October 2004.
• All large cities across Canada, with the exception of Vancouver, Surrey, and the neighbouring municipalities, now use the ward system in local elections.

Nikpay: Children gain whatever their parents teach them

Sara Moghadamjoo is a young well-educated Iranian-Canadian, who recently graduated with two masters degree from Simon Fraser University and is only a year away from getting her PhD from the University of British Columbia.

She decided to stand in the upcoming municipal elections for the district of West Vancouver as she wanted to represent the thousands of Iranian immigrants who live in the area.

But after only three weeks of campaigning, she withdrew her candidacy, disillusion at the lack of support from the community.

“I wanted to be their voice,” she said. “But when I saw that they had very little interest in seeing what I was trying to do, I figured that I could use the time I was spending on my campaign to do my own work.”

The triennial municipal elections will be held on Saturday the November 19th. This would not be the first time Vancouver has Iranian-Canadians candidates for council, but it could be, however, be the first time having someone elected within this community.

Listen: Moghadamjoo on why she decided not to run

A wariness of politics

An estimated 30,000 Iranians live in and around Vancouver according to the 2006 census. The figure today could be over 50,000, estimates Behshad Hastibakhsh, an award-winning political scientist who is senior director of public relations at   TIO Networks.

Many immigrated to Canada after the 1979 Islamic revolution and many brought with them a mistrust of politics.

“The first generation of Iranian immigrants are more likely to be skeptical towards politics and politicians,” said Hastibakhsh, “because they come from an environment where basic human rights are denied, corruption is common, democracy is non-existent, and elections are fixed.”

“People can’t break the old mold,” he said.

Hastibakhsh believes that the ethnic media can help change attitudes.

“I envision a positive role of Persian newspapers, radio, television stations, and online media in explaining the rights and privileges of active participation in the democratic process,” he said, “by creating clear distinctions between the theocracy in Iran and the democracy in Canada, the mass media can help newcomers overcome their fears, phobias and mistrusts towards politics.”

This wariness of politics appears to have been passed onto the children born or raised in Canada.

“Children gain whatever their parents teach them,” said Max Nikpay, a council candidate for the district of West Vancouver. “Most of those parents come from a place where people are unable to use their voice.”

Another is Araz Rismani, an Iranian candidate in Coquitlam, who is grateful for the support from the community.

“I have a team of 50 people helping me with my campaign and there are a lot of Iranians among them,” he said. “At a fundraiser held in Red Robinson Show Theatre, a lot of people showed up and I think 80% of the were Iranians.

Yet even he acknowledges that Iranians who were raised in Canada remain detached from politics.

“We should understand that the reason Canada has stayed a democratic country is because of these elections and we shouldn’t take that for granted.”

There are many Iranian-run businesses in Lonsdale.

Local politicians point to a more concrete reason why Iranians should care about civic politics.

“Lonsdale wouldn’t do this well if it wasn’t for successful Iranian businesses,” said Darell Mussatto, the mayor of city of North Vancouver. There is at least one Iranian-run business at every intersection in Lonsdale.

Reaching the young

Encouraging young people to vote is not just an issue in the Iranian community.

Advocacy groups like Get your Vote On say there is a gulf between the youth and politicians.

“The biggest problem is that young people feel that politicians don’t speak to them, and politicians, on the other hand, don’t see that youth as voters,” said Adrian Sinclair from Get Your Vote On. “It is really a cycle,” he added.

One young Iranian-Canadian who is considering whether to vote is Afra Jashanivand, a 24-year old artist attending Capilano University.

“I am interested in getting involved,” she said. “But sometimes I need to focus on my studies and my own work.”

She says that she tries to participate in different events and elections around the campus and believes that this involvement is a good practice for her.

Even though she is no longer standing the vote, Moghadamjoo maintains that the Iranian community needs to be political active.

Listen: Moghadamjoo on changing attitudes to politics

“I think for the sake of their own businesses and their own lives, Iranian people should participate in these elections.”

“People who care about their environment should take action in the process. We can’t just step back and wait for someone else to do the work,” said Moghadamjoo.

“This is a very important issue and I think we all have a certain responsibility to help create a new culture which would fit our new lifestyles,” she said, “and I think is really important to educate people about this issue.”

“I made a decision to run but I wasn’t thinking I should run because I am Filipino,” said Aquino.

Aquino tackles politics in a spoken word performance.

This is Aquino’s first foray into politics. He is running under the COPE banner as a person who has never seriously considered politics until now.

On Nov. 19 Vancouverites will elect 10 city councillors and a mayor. Historically, Vancouver’s ethnic groups have had limited  representation on council, even though visible minorities in Vancouver make up 47 per cent of the population.

While Aquino is a visible minority, he does not want to be defined by his ethnicity.  In terms of election issues, he is particularly concerned about lack of affordable housing in the city.

“Why would anyone want to spend 60% or more of their pay cheque just to pay for the roof over their head?” Aquino asks.

“A lot of  [young] people want to gain independence and move out of their parents’ house and they can’t. For growing families, how can you have peace of mind when all you are doing is trying to maintain your mortgage and not have time to spend with your kids?” said Aquino.

The birth of his daughter earlier this year was a catalyst for Aquino. This event pushed him into action. He wants to be a role model for his daughter’s generation.

Michael Dharni, the city’s only South Asian council candidate, would have to look a long way back for a role model. The first and only other South Asian elected to council was Venkatachala Setty Pendakur in 1972.

Pendakur served for one term and since then the city’s second-largest ethnic minority has not seen representation on council.

Like Aquino, 23 year-old Dharni is not running because of his ethnic background.

“The people making decisions at the municipal level that affect us the most are old people,” said Dharni. “I want to bring a youth voice.”

Dharni is a UBC kinesiology student who grew up in South Vancouver. He says he can’t afford to park in his hometown and he wants to work to make the city more affordable.

“Parking [is] an example of how current council continues to gauge residents in daily expenses while we all are already dealing with increased taxes, housing and heating costs,” said Dharni.

Dharni is an independent candidate fighting for a more affordable city.

Representing diversity

“Diversity in public office is important because it brings more perspectives to decision-making. The more perspectives you bring to a decision, the better the decision, ” said Sandra Lopes, manager of policy and research at the Maytree Foundation.

In Vancouver, the Social Planning and Research Council (SPARC) took the Foundation’s DiverseCity initiative, to begin a similar initiative here.  The goal is to change the face of leadership in Canadian cities.

“We make the assumption that if you look and sound like the makeup of the city you must have the cultural competencies to reflect the city. There is a gap in that,” said Alden E. Habacon, a diversity and inclusion specialist at UBC.

Listen: Habacon on diversity as a metric, not a goal

Habacon argues that visual representation alone is not necessarily an accurate measure of success.

Connecting community

One of the three Chinese-Canadians on outgoing city council is Dr. Kerry Jang, a third generation Chinese-Canadian. He is  trying to keep his seat as a city councillor with the Vision team.

“If someone is truly engaged within their own community they will bring that perspective forward. But that isn’t to say that someone that is not Chinese or some other ethnicity can’t also represent somebody else’s ideas,” said Jang.

Jang’s ethnicity informs his role as a policy-maker, but he is skeptical about certain politicians approaching ethnic communities.

“Being Chinese myself, I know people come and suck up to the Chinese community because they want the Chinese vote. They don’t give two shits about the Chinese community,” said Jang.

He has been asked point blank on how to get the “Chinese vote.”

Aquino has had similar experiences related to the Filipino community.

“I have encountered people who have said you are now the token ethnic vote-getter. Which is unfortunate because that is not the case. I think we are past that now as a city,” said Aquino.

However, he believes his experience doing community work would help him as a councillor. He co-founded the organization Tulayan, which means ‘to bridge’ in the Filipino language Tagalog.  Tulayan helps Filipino-Canadians reconnect with contemporary Filipino culture.

“Working with a lot of immigrant communities, the recurring theme is that issues that affect Filipinos affect other communities, affect first generation to seventh generation Canadians,” Aquino said.

Beyond visual representation

Habacon would like to see more visible minorities on council and ensuring those representatives are the “best and brightest” is more important for him.

“People ask me all the time, am I going to vote for RJ Aquino because he is Filipino,” said Habacon.

Habacon says in Vancouver there has been a shift from ethnicity eclipsing identity to ethnicity informing identity.

Young voters such as Lilavati Levine want the council to reflect the city’s diversity.

The 18 year old is voting in a civic election for the first time and describes herself as “youth dedicated to social change.” She names eight distinct groups that make up her ethnic background.

“What I would like to see is Aboriginal representation on council and I want to see mixed race folks. We are so intercultural as well as multicultural and to have a representation of that is just as important,” she said.

For Levine, a complicated discussion about representation is important, but her key concern is less complicated.  She has one question for the people running: “What can you do in politics to help me?”

Four new contenders are challenging the incumbent director Maria Harris on the issue of governance of Electoral Area A – a scattered set of regions around Vancouver that are not part of any municipality.

They include the University Endowment Lands and the University of British Columbia, commonly called the “UniverCity”. Area A also includes the Barnston Island, Howe Sound and Indian Arm communities.

The regions of Electoral Area A are scattered around Vancouver

The candidates are hoping to win votes in the Nov. 19 election and become the only elected official representing the UniverCity.

Over 11,000 people live in the area. Candidate Scott Andrews thinks the term “city” should be taken more literally, especially considering the population is expected to reach 24,000 by 2020.

The problem, says Harris, is that it is not within the director’s power to change governance.

“Does the director have influence? Yes. Do they have authority? No. If  they tell you ‘I plan to change governance,’ I defy anybody in this role of doing anything other than exerting an influence,” he said.

The Director of Electoral Area A sits on the Board of Metro Vancouver, alongside 36 other mayors and councilors for the region. The vote of each member is weighted according to the population of their region, meaning that Area A’s vote is worth just 0.5% of the total.

“We need an open, active and inclusive conversation on governance.” said UBC political science student Spencer Rasmussen, who has been following the issue for several years.

”All voices need to be heard, and all voices need to hear each other,” he added. “The Area A candidates need to think about how they will ensure that conversation takes place.”

Getting a say on transit

The current structure of Area A affects many areas of life for students and residents. With no council or mayor, they are not represented on TransLink, despite UBC being the second-busiest transport hub in Metro Vancouver.

“Other municipalities are essentially allowed to make decisions for transit that’s relevant to UBC,” said Alexandria Mitchell, a candidate for director who is making transit her top priority.

Listen: Mitchell: 43,200 trips down the Broadway corridor every day (3:29)

Download: Alex-Mitchell-transit-short.mp3

If the UniverCity were to become a municipality, a vote on TransLink would be automatically granted. However, students not living on campus, and thus those using transit the most, would not be eligible to vote.

At the last election in 2008, less than a thousand of a possible 9000 votes were cast in the vote for the director, and only around 250 of them came from the student population.

Ruling over the land

The non-student residents of the UniverCity are represented by the University Neighbourhood Association (UNA), which advises UBC’s Board of Governors, but does not hold a seat.  The Board of Governors is made up of both elected representatives from the student, faculty and employee populations; and members appointed by the province.

In the summer of 2010, the province took the power of land use planning on campus away from Metro Vancouver and gave it to the provincial government’s Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development. This increased UBC’s power to make decisions about development .

“Some say the UBC Board of Governors is like a 19th century monarchy; they own the land, they develop the land and that’s terrible,” said candidate Andrews, who is running with the intent of transforming the area into a municipality.

The decision to place a hospice near the South Campus residences caused many to question the value of the quasi-municipal UNA structure. The hospice was planned by UBC before consultation with residents, and the predominantly Asian community living next door opposed it on cultural grounds.

Writing in May 2011 in The Campus Resident, a newspaper for those living at UniverCity, Hawthorn Place resident Greg Feldman called for a review of the local governance system.

“The controversy emerged from the absence of a process for resolving local differences that we can proudly call democratic,” he said.

“This statement is no indictment against the UNA, but only a sign that its weak position relative to UBC should inspire us to strengthen it into a more robust body for local governance.”

Time for change

Incumbent Maria Harris (L) and candidate Scott Andrews (R) discuss resident's issues at the Nov 10 forum

At an all candidates meeting for director at Westbrook Village on Nov. 10, most contenders advocated for a change to the governance system of Electoral Area A and its knock-on effects for the relationship between UBC and UniverCity residents.

The incumbent Harris is instead focusing her work on transit and building relationships on the Metro Vancouver Board. She thinks less drastic solutions to the governance problem can be sought.

“Residents should have a determining say [in development planning]. There are a variety of routes we could use to reach this goal. [For example] UBC makes a plan, and then an independent locally-elected body approves it,” she said.

“I’m not ready at this time to endorse a particular route; I don’t think it’s wise.”

The obligation to conduct a governance review rests with the provincial Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development, and would be expected to take two years.

Directors serve three-year terms, which  candidates agree is not long enough to completely overhaul the governance system.

Voting app is only available for the iPhone.

The Vancouver Votes app was released on Oct. 27, to encourage more people to vote. By Nov. 14, it had only been downloaded 1,000 times, even though the city has 400,000 registered voters.

By comparison, a similar app released for Calgary’s municipal elections a year ago hit 4,000 downloads.

City officials have not set a target for downloads and say there will not be a way to tell if the app has any impact.

“You never know with elections whether the tools you use got people out to vote,” said City Chief election officer Janice MacKenzie.

The goal with voters is to “get the information into their hands and by virtue of that encourage them to vote,” she said.

Appealing to youth

Voter turnout has fallen in the last two municipal elections and the city is particularly concerned about trying to reach young adults who shun the ballot box.

But experts who research youth engagement in politics say an app fails to address the real reasons why so many young people do not vote.

Heather Bastedo, a research specialist studying Canadian political participation with Samara, said youth were disengaged because they don’t identify with candidates and their values.

“It can’t make you care about your candidates, and can’t give you confidence in your vote, and that’s a big part,” she said.

Voter engagement advocates are pleased the city has developed a tool they can use in their own work, encouraging the public to get more involved in the election.

“It’s one more thing we can pick up without developing it ourselves, ” said Andrea Curtis, a coordinator for Get Your Vote On, an advocacy group working specifically to increasing young voter turnout.

Marketing the app

The idea for an app came from Vancouver’s communications department.

They approached developers Purple Forge based on apps they had developed for Calgary’s municipal elections and the 2010 by-election in Victoria.

City officials said the app was mainly marketed the official election website and voter’s guides distributed throughout the city.

When asked if any attempt had been made to specifically target younger voters, officials said that because their budget was limited their ads were very “broad and generic” and “don’t target any one demographic.”

They described Facebook and Twitter accounts as their best avenue of communication. The app had been mentioned by city officials twice on Facebook on October 27 and November 1, and once on Twitter on October 27. 

Smartphone owners

In an effort to keep costs down, the city chose to only commission an iPhone app at the recommendation of the developer.

The iPhone has 31 per cent of the smartphone market compared to the market leader, Blackberry with 38 per cent, according to comScore figures reported by iPhoneinCanada.

With the goal of reaching out to young adults, Bastedo cautions that those young people least likely to vote are also least likely to own an iPhone.

The city has doubled advanced polling days to encourage voting.

Unfortunately, she said, when it comes to increasing voter turnout, it’s a matter of experimentation. It’s not easy to know what will have an effect on numbers and “this may be as good as it gets.”

Alexandra Samuel, Director of the social media and interactive media centre at Emily Carr said the cycle of elections means there will always be a new technology to test.

What is important to consider, she said, is “what kinds of technologies and approaches will generate the best kinds of outcomes.”

“These kinds of apps are most likely to appeal to motivated citizens, that is, to people who would vote anyhow,” she said.

One advantage the app has is its ability to sent push notifications to users, reminding them when and where to vote.

Bastedo said this could be the most important feature of the app for improving voting numbers. It’s a non-partisan mimic of the scrutineers hired by political parties to call supporters with a reminder on voting day.

“Getting people out on voting day is the success or failure of a campaign,” she said.

(Index photo of the voting place courtesy of Travis Nep Smith)

]]> http://thethunderbird.ca/2011/11/17/10k-election-app-struggles-to-stir-public-interest/feed/ 0 http://thethunderbird.ca/2011/11/17/adriane-carr-bids-to-build-on-green-party-federal-success/ http://thethunderbird.ca/2011/11/17/adriane-carr-bids-to-build-on-green-party-federal-success/#comments Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:22:33 +0000 Jordan Wade http://thethunderbird.ca/?p=20588 Adriane Carr is running for Vancouver City Council for the first time, but she is no stranger to campaigning. This will be Carr’s eighth attempt at winning an election.

Adriane Carr works the phones at the Green Party head office in Gastown

While the positions she’s tried to secure over the years have varied, her party has not. She’s once again running on the Green Party ticket, the perpetual underdog at virtually all levels of Canadian government over the past two and a half decades.

But the ever-resilient Carr and her supporters are optimistic that this time it will be different, following the success of the Green Party leader Elizabeth May in the federal campaign earlier this year.

May, a longtime friend and political ally, recognizes the sacrifice that Carr made to ensure that the Greens were able to finally secure a seat in parliament.

“She’s extremely determined, tireless, and more focused on getting things done then getting credit for getting things done,” said May.

Vancouverties will decide on Carr’s fate when they cast their ballots on Nov. 19.

A green start

A Vancouverite who spent part of her childhood in the Kootenays and on the Sunshine Coast, Carr earned a Masters in Urban Geography from UBC in 1980, and subsequently taught courses on cultural and urban geography, as well as economic development, at Langara College for 12 years.

She co-founded the Green Party of BC, the first of its kind in North America, in 1983.

“It was so easy to get the party started,” recalled her husband Paul George, who helped co-found the party from their Kitsilano kitchen.

Adriane Carr talks with supporters on Davie Street with husband Paul George campaigning in the background

“All you needed was four people and a statement of intent and you got yourself a party. But getting elected — oh boy, that is a whole other story.”

Carr’s first campaign was for the 1983 provincial election in the riding of Vancouver-Point Grey, where she finished last out of eight candidates. That was followed by an unsuccessful attempt in the 1984 municipal election, when she ran for a seat on the Vancouver School Board.

She took a break from politics in the late 1980s to concentrate on The Western Canadian Wilderness Committee with George, during which time she also sat on the Canadian International Development Agency’s advisory committee for Environment and Sustainable Development.

Carr was pulled back into politics a decade later, replacing Stuart Parker as Green Party leader in 2000. This time, she based herself in the Powell River/Sunshine Coast riding.

Neither the Greens nor Carr were able to win a seat during the provincial elections in 2001 or 2005 ; she finished in third place both times, with 27 per cent and 25.8 per cent of the popular vote, respectively.  She also finished third in a 2004 provincial by-election.

Ben West, Carr’s former campaign manager, said her biggest obstacle to winning a seat in Victoria was that as leader of the party she was too busy traveling the province and couldn’t spend enough time in her own riding.

Listen: Ben West on Adriane Carr as an activist and political party leader

After she resigned as provincial party leader in 2006 to run in the 2008 federal election, West was among those who suggested she move permanently to the riding of Vancouver Centre, where she would be more accessible to the media.

She finished fourth, with 18 per cent of the popular vote. She took fourth place in the 2011 federal election as well, garnering just 15.4 per cent of the popular vote.

West thinks that the Carr was unlucky with a number of convergent factors, including facing popular incumbent Hedy Fry, who ran despite ‘rumored retirement.’ “It was a perfect storm of circumstances working against her, unfortunately.”

Sacrifice and civic politics  

After Carr’s most recent defeat this past spring, her supporters encouraged her to throw her hat back into civic politics.

Name recognition isn’t enough, said Geoff Meggs, a Vision Vancouver councillor.

“To actually identify, persuade and motivate sufficient numbers of people to get out to the polls you need a significant organization, and that costs money, and she has none of that so she’s probably going be unsuccessful.”

In the 2008 civic election both the NPA and Vision Vancouver each had budgets of over $2 million, while the Green Party only about spent $8,000.

Meggs goes even further, questioning the presence of the Green Party on the ballot overall.

He points to former Green Party member and current Vision councilor Andrea Reimer, as well as his party’s Greenest City 2020 plan as evidence that the Vision-led council is “the greenest in Canada, probably the greenest in North America.”

Randy Helten, a mayoral candidate for the relatively new Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver, disagrees with Meggs. He sees the Green Party as an organization with a strong supporter network and Carr as a woman of integrity.

Despite the party’s lack of funding, he thinks that she actually has a good chance of winning.

“Adriane is one of a kind in this particular election. She has special qualifications that no one else offers this time and she can really make a difference in Vancouver,” said Helten.

If so, for Carr, the eighth time would indeed be the charm.