As each election passes more voter resources become available on-line. The upcoming provincial general election has generated sites chock full of a variety of useful information and even some fun interactive tools.
The Elections Manitoba’s official website offers resources for participating in Manitoba provincial elections. They conduct Manitoba’s provincial elections, by-elections and referendums and operate free of political influence. It’s their job to make sure every eligible citizen has the opportunity to vote. The best place to start is to find out who your candidates are in your electoral division and where you can vote.
The citizen-created, volunteer-run ManitobaElection.ca website is a great resource for getting to know your candidates. Candidates are listed along with links to their web pages, email addresses, Facebook fan pages, Twitter feeds and even You Tube channels. News articles that mention candidates are automatically gathered from Google News and fed directly onto the website, as well as a scrolling Twitter feed with all comments using the hash tags #mbvotes.
The University of Manitoba’s Understanding the Manitoba Election has run a series of cafe events encompassing a wide range of topics “…intended to raise the level of knowledge and awareness of politics in Manitoba, so that more citizens may engage meaningfully in the democratic process.” If you missed a cafe they are available to watch on their You Tube channel.
The Winnipeg Free Press has quite a selection of engaging features on their Democracy Project. The website is not only a rich source of articles from Free Press journalists, but also has everything from video clips and the full Chamber of Commerce leaders debate to a voter issue quiz and the somewhat addictive “Whack an Issue” game.
The CBC’s Manitoba Votes 2011 website (link currently unavailable) has video clips, the scrolling tweets tagged with #mbvotes, as well as their fair-minded Reality Check series – offering straightforward facts on the election issues that are often being exaggerated or completely discounted.
CTV Winnipeg’s Your Vote page (link currently unavailable) also has video clips, the twitter scroll, and an election story archive.
Please remember to come out to vote on TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4th or check out the advance voting for even more convenience.