I’ve been largely ignoring all news about the Toronto mayoral election until it suddenly dawned upon me that I can vote this time, given my recent move back to Toronto. Better get informed…<\/p>\n
Election website<\/a> is here. The date is October 25th<\/strong>. How to get onto the voter’s list<\/a> and ID documents required<\/a>. Where to vote<\/a> (unless you vote early<\/a>) depends on what what ward you live in<\/a>. Apparently in about a month there will be a better, map-based interactive tool for finding where to vote, so might as well wait until then if you’re going to vote on election day.<\/p>\n Regarding the mayor, there are 41 people running<\/a>, although Wikipedia explains<\/a> that there are only five considered to have a shot at winning. The polls listed in the table would suggest it’s more like two candidates, but then again 1\/3 to 1\/2 of people are apparently undecided. Unlike provincial or federal elections, there are no political parties, so we can’t be lazy and vote with the party we think is the best option, we need to actually do some research.<\/p>\n It seems that the two biggest issues are, not surprisingly, transportation (TTC, bike lanes, etc.), and the rather poor state of the city’s budget. If you’re only considering the five likely candidates, there is a decent page on each at Toronto News 24<\/a> which has a video and profile of each. More useful in terms of the issues is the similar page for each candidate at 680 News<\/a><\/strong> as they list each’s position on several issues explicitly. If they could just put it all on one page as a big table, we’d be set. For some more information on less likely candidates, there’s some good links compiled at jackandcokewithalime<\/a>. For general election news, aside from the aforementioned websites and general Toronto news sources, there’s also Toronto Election News<\/a>. Toronto Municipal Election News<\/a><\/strong> is also full of excellent links.<\/p>\n In addition to the mayor, you can also vote for the councillor in your ward<\/a>, and school trustees, but you’ll have to go into that for yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been largely ignoring all news about the Toronto mayoral election until it suddenly dawned upon me that I can vote this time, given my recent move back to Toronto. Better get informed… Election website is here. The date is … Continue reading