Thoughts on Election Day

With Election Day on hand, I encourage you to vote. For those of you that don’t think your voice matters or that nothing every changes, I encourage you to look at these chats which are a combination of all the polling company results in BC and Quebec.

From Andrew Heard

From Andrew Heard

One of the big changes during this election campaign is the coming of age of social media. During the campaign, I was practically spammed with party rhetoric and was responsible for some myself. While the general public's involvement in the election campaign was up, political parties and their candidates haven’t fully embraced the two-way nature of social media.

Personally, I was disappointed at most of the local Langley candidates this federal election. In the 2008 federal election we heard from all candidate with the exception of Mark Warawa who continues to have a policy of not responding to questions unless it is major media outlet or local media like the Langley Times or Langley Advance. So I was not surprised the he didn’t respond, but I was shocked that only Craig Nobbs of the Pirate Party of Canada had time this federal election to reply to our email request to answer a few questions on sustainable community building. Apparently, Carey Poitras of the Green Party, Piotr Majkowski of the NDP, and Rebecca Darnell of the Liberal had no time to reply to our email.

During the 2009 provincial election, we heard from most Langley candidates including from the incumbent BC Liberal candidates, so I don’t know what happened with the federal candidates this time around. I know that many candidates now have twitter feeds, facebook pages, and email. If they want to attract the younger generation, they need to realize that the Internet is a two-way street. Hearing from a candidate when you tweet them with a real question is very exciting. Sadly, I didn’t not experience it this election.