The D250 Campaign, roughly a $9 Million spend by both federal and the NS Provincial Governments to get you to the polls? Seems that the campaign failed as the numbers were terrible this year. Maybe I missed something with the D250 campaign, What was the end goal?
Lets look at the numbers. In the most recent federal election a mere 59.1% of eligible Canadians turned out to vote and in the 2006 election 64.7% turned out to vote and judging by the numbers that election Canada publishes this is the worst election for voter turnout ever. And this past weekends Municipal elections don’t look to have fared any better, also recording a poor showing of voters.
So what was the purpose of this D250 campaign cause it sure wasn’t meant to inspire the young and the old to get out and vote? Given the lack of votes did D250 do the opposite and turn off voters? Or maybe no one got the message …
The election decline! This seems to be the common trend with elections over the last couple of decades, numbers are dropping and governments are left wondering why. Maybe it’s because our leaders have lost touch and no longer connect with the majority of the voting public, are they still target their baby boomer cliques while the younger voters are left to wander? Alternatively, maybe our elected officials fail to inspire and motivate anymore essentially leading to the voting public not caring.
$9 Million spent and we ended up with a poor showing at the polls. Have people just given up and don’t care anymore about the selection of the politicians that run our provinces, country and even cities?
Something to read from Dal News, Click Here.
I heard Dr Hamm on CBC this morning talking about how this campaign was mostly focused at high school students who aren’t yet old enough to vote. The hope is that when they do turn 18, they’ll be more engaged than the current 18-30 set. Who knows if it will work. I think there are much bigger problems with the electorate that influence the voter turnout in a big way. Just telling people that they should vote isn’t going to change much. You need to give them a good reason to do so and right now, there isn’t much incentive.
Interesting to say the least … If it was targeted at that audience why were they running a campaign targeted at the younger crowd (www.d250.ca) and a separate one for the older folks (www.democracy250.ca)? I guess when something doesn’t go right you need to find an answer that gives the appearance of potential success.
Shouldn’t the D250 campaign also engaged adults who feel voter apathy? to inspire us?
Strikes me really funny (sadly) that the D250 campaign was very old-style and autocratic? Isn’t democracy about the voice of the people? Why didn’t they use Social Media to create a conversation? Why not hold town halls integrated with social media?
Instead we got a wasted $9M one-way campaign that didn’t engage anyone…thinking like Microsoft; throw more ad dollars at something instead of focusing on the product. Yup, that’s democratic!
Hey I just Landed in Nova Scotia and it seems like I’m in the Bizzaro World.
Witness drunk driving Cabinet Ministers, Drunk Driving RCMP Constables, $300,000 non existent phones, carbon copy tourism campaigns, 9 million to encourage non voters to vote, ripping off immigrants, no VC funding, limited govt contracts….I could go on. It’s amazing the populus stands for it. I guess when all the lemmings fall off the cliff they by pass Newfoundland and make shore in Nova Scotia.
Ironic, can’t see that happening in the old scotia , then again they have embraced vegetarian Haggis….
What is my point? Grab a soapbox and shout, shout out loud, stand up and make a difference, pretty soon it will be to late.
Let’s add to that a mayor with no vision who’s anti-development, provincial government spin-offs that stop local businesses from doing things, vehicle leasing program changes that cost tax-payers more than before, a minority government that has no effective opposition, a premier lining up a cozy fed position (Senate perhaps?) by cowtowing to the biggest spending PM in Canadian history, spending 90% of the tourism budget to tell people here how they’re spending money marketing the province, focusing economic trade with an economy in decline rather than Europe where there’s money and opportunity, immigration programs that end up costing twice as much as original and end up screwing the immigrants…OK, one could go on…this place is worse than Ireland!
They could have given me about $25,000 of that money and I would have increased voter turn-out simply by printing out reminders for voters not to forget their identification cards.