Chaos in Chaonada (Ie. Canada Votes)

Since my Social Media class is over, I’ve been lacking a bit of direction on where to take this blog, but I’m thinking I want to keep talking about current issues, “in the social world around us”.

So what have people been talking about lately? Well if you watch the Canadian news, its all about the upcoming Canadian election (besides all the NHL Playoff fever of course, which I will try to talk about later this week). Sure, there are problems in Japan, Libya, Ivory Coast and Yemen too, but I don’t think those issues will be resolved any time soon, and we only have until May 2nd to decide who to vote for! Less than a month people.

What really made me start thinking about the election this year was Rick Mercer’s Rant on the season finale of his show. He talked about how every demographic group has been targeted by politicians, and “if there were more than 5 paraplegic lesbian Inuit women in Labrador...they would be a target”. He points out that is everyone is targeted...that is, except the youth vote. Watch his rant below.

But do young people even care? Voter turnout for the 18-25 demographic has historically always been low, but as Elizabeth May pointed out on George Stroumboulopoulos tonight, she wants to “merge” with the 41% of everyday people (of all ages) who don’t vote in elections. You can watch Strombo interview May here.

So why don’t more people (of all ages) vote? Well, as Stephen Colbert points out ya, Canadian politics is boooooring. See below.

But I would hope that everyone agrees they would rather live in a Democracy vs. some sort of crazy Dictatorship, so they do care a bit....so then whats the problem?

I would say a big problem is that people don’t know who to vote for. Who knows who’s even running in their riding and what they stand for? I’ve voted lots since I turned 18, in Federal, Provincial and Municipal elections, and to be honest I can’t even remember who I actually ended up voting for in each one.

And if you’re like me, who has voted in a different riding in each election since I was 18...it gets confusing. The ridings I've voted in include: my hometown riding of Vancouver Island North (ok, I never actually voted there, but I always pay attention to the results there), Saanich Gulf Islands (where I lived during University), Vancouver Centre (where I lived after University) and soon to be Calgary Centre (where I live now) and that doesn’t count all the places I’ve lived in between elections.. Candidates change, their policies change, and heck I’ve changed.

Well, lucky for us, we don’t live in ‘50s any more, and we have more resources than ever to learn about the election and all *joy* it brings.

Besides typical news shows like The National, which I love to watch purely for Peter Mansbridge funny quips, (eg. “Don’t roll your eyes Canada, Toronto has needs too” as spoken by the Man, regarding transit issues in urban areas) you can always catch videos clips of the candidates themselves, repeating their “key messages” (but please don’t listen to anything they say on TV commercials. Unless you believe things like “iPods are Magical” as I talked about in this post). There are also shows like George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight where you can get some basic background info, or uh the Rick Mercer Report I guess, before it finished for the season. (Am I missing any other good shows? Let me know.) 

Heck, you can even just follow them on Twitter for all their funny commentary, (eg. @strombo and @rickmercer) or any of the candidate who use Social Media themselves (eg. @ElizabethMay). Its better than nothing!!

Bobbleheads help us learn about the Election Candidates
- used on Strombo Tonight

But most importantly, don’t forget about the regular old internet! Instead of going on Facebook for the 5th time today, why not just do a quick search and educate yourself? You’re here already, so why not just follow this link and go to CBC’s My Election page, where you can simply input your postal code where it says “Find My Riding” and boom! All the info about your riding is there, including who the candidates are! (If you are silly enough not to know your postal code, just go to the Canada Post website here and type in your address.) It’s easy, I swear!

So if you say “I don’t have the time”, that’s a lie. Educate yourself (for 10 minutes over the internet), and then take 10 minutes out of your day, on your way home from work on May 2nd, and make your voice heard. It will probably take you less time than going to Starbucks during their weird 3pm rush.

If you need any more reason to vote, just check out this awesome video. Then do your research and VOTE!

Before I end this post, I would to share some of what I learned from the CBC Find My Riding page with you below. 

Random Fact Time:

• Did you know that in my current riding of Calgary Centre, the Average Family Income is $145,427!?! That’s crazy! Do you know what it is in your riding?

Well, residents of Calgary Centre seem even richer if you compare them to people where I’m from:

• The Average Family Income of residents of Vancouver Island North is only $68,472!!! (Strangely enough, both ridings tend to go to the Conservatives.)

This might make sense, if you look at the education levels of the two areas: 

• In Calgary Centre 96% of families hold a Post-Secondary Degree.
• In VI North only 36% of families hold a Post-Secondary Degree.
• The National Average is 51%.

So maybe education and income go together. However, if you look at residents of Vancouver Centre, (another one of my old ridings), it's a little different:

• The Average Family Income is only $88,204, but
• 131% of families hold a Post-Secondary Degree! How is that even possible? Well, they obviously combine 2+ people, but still. Yowza. 

Maybe closer to the election I will put that into an Excel sheet for easy reference.

So do you have any interesting facts about your riding? More reasons to vote/not vote? Share it in the comments below!

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Update:

If you need more help deciding who to vote for, there's always:

• The Vote Compass on CBCs website, which allows you to take a simple quiz regarding key issues and it tells you which party most reflects your views. Not the most accurate, but a neat idea.

• The website Project Democracy, which gives suggestions of who to vote for in key ridings. Just type in you're postal code (similar to the CBCs "Find My Riding") and it tells you more about your area. Its a little ahem, left leaning, but that's ok with me! 

Blogging, what is it good for?

Blogs have come a long way since 1994, when Justin Hall created what is credited as the first blog ever. Once used as sort of an online diary, today they can be used in any industry, to accomplish a variety of marketing and communication goals. They can be used to differentiate a company from the competition, to create a community around your brand and to manage your reputation. And of course, like the Dilbert comic demonstrates, to establish yourself as an industry expert.

According to blog statistics, the Huffington Post is currently the most visited blog, and receives an estimated 28,000,000 Unique Visitors every month. According to Forbes, “the site is a mix of news, politics, opinions and entertainment, and is fed by an army of 6,000 free bloggers and celebrity contributors”. To be honest, with all this content, I didn’t even think of the Huffpo as a blog, more an in-depth news website, which I talked about in this post about my RSS feeds. But that just goes to show what blogs today are capable of.

Blog can also be very valuable assets, as shown when Huffpo was sold to AOL for $315 million in February 2011. This, despite the fact that Huffpo simply aggregates content from a variety of sources to build its own traffic, and doesn’t pay for many of its writers bloggers. In fact, this led to Stephen Colbert to creating his own website, called the Colbuffington Re-post, which he described as “everything you love about the Huffington Post, because it’s the Huffington Post with a new border around it that says the Colbuffington Re-post”. He offered it for sale for $316 million, ($1 million more than AOL paid for Huffpo) and said that if he finds a buyer, he will give them the same cut he’s getting for them to publish his content - in other words, nothing. A humorous way at poking fun at the fact that much of the content on the internet is not really “free”.

So what is the Huffington Post doing right? What could other industry blogs learn from them?