Yes, it is the dog days of summer and nobody is really interested in politics. We understand that. It is not as though the old pros are stymied. They can always come up with a column. The other day, Susan Delacourt of the Toronto Star did the 34th column on Pierre Trudeau’s campaign in 1972 being like his son’s efforts in 2019. You really had to be there to know they were not similar at all.
I expect we are all getting impatient. Enough of the phony campaign folks, let’s get to it. We are eager for insults to be flung, new policies to be postulated, improbable promises to be made. Looking at the campaigns to-date, there has been little to move a vote or voter.
There has actually been more interest the past week in the claim that the election day should be moved to accommodate the Orthodox Jews who have a religious holiday on voting day. I can assure you, as someone who spent a career choosing dates for public events, there is no day in the year not already committed to some religion, some cause, some activity or just a day off because we need one that time of year.
Since I rarely vote on the actual date of an election, I have always thought we should have the voting for an Election Week. If you cannot find a few minutes to go and vote during an Election Week, there is no hope for you. Mind you, we should still have mailed votes, computer votes, proxy votes and any other type of voting to ensure that everyone has their say.
From the view of a campaign manager, life would also be easier. Getting out your vote would take a week but you could sure do a much better job. It used to be that you had to have almost a separate campaign organization for election day. It was an intense effort going from the start of voting in the morning until the polls closed at night and your people had to watch the counts.
As much as five or six days for getting out the vote would be much better than explaining to voters that ‘Yes, they can vote at an advance poll just because they felt like it.’
Election Week would not be as much fun, but it would be much easier to organize.
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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry
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