Waterloo Region Council Election Discussion

[fakepnijjar]

A few responses:

There are lots of ways to help with the site, and we really need help.

• Publicity. Tell your friends and enemies about the site in person. Spread the word on Facebook and Twitter and other social media. We hope to have some posters soon, and if you are willing to put up posters or leaflets that would be amazing. If you know people who have design skills then we could use them for designing logos and posters and such.
  
• We need some people who will monitor news sites throughout the election, and submit articles that they find. We are gravitating towards news rather than opinion pieces, but there may be room for both. (We are trying to stay as non-partisan as possible.) There is a list of news sites we know about so far at this issue: https://github.com/CivicTechWR/WRvotes/issues/52
  
• We need to track down Twitter feeds and/or campaign websites for the remaining candidates. This will be more of a job come September, I am guessing, but it needs doing.
  
• Some candidates are holding their own events. We need to go through the candidate websites and figure out who is holding events, then get them on our calendar.
  
• We need to find out about upcoming all-candidates meetings across the region. That means getting in contact with community groups (such as neighbourhood associations) and asking them of their plans. Simultaneously we need to tell them that the site exists and ask them to publicize the site to their members.
  

There is more, I am sure. If you want to help the easiest way is to email us (civictechwr.wrvotes@gmail.com) . Attending a CivicTechWR meetup is good too, but that won't happen for two weeks. You can also join the Slack channel and/or participate in Github issues directly. You folks are super-connected to local issues, so you can help a lot.

As to other questions: yes, candidate sites are often boring. I have found that reading someone's Twitter quickly gives you insight into their political positions and priorities. In addition all-candidates meetings are excellent for evaluating candidates.

There are a bunch of issues in the region this election so far. Safe injection sites are getting a lot of play. Affordable housing is a big concern (and this is one of Aissa's platform planks, the other being health care). A lot of people are pushing back against intensification using the pretense of "maintaining neighbourhood character". And yes, the LRT is still an issue. People are grumpy that it is not running, and they are using that as political leverage in the campaign.