It's the night before the municipal elections, and lots of people are looking for information, so I wanted to outline some of the tools and resources we've created.
First off, head to timescolonist.com/elections — that's where all of our election coverage is.
There, you'll find:
- Profiles of candidates, including our Position Primer tool (more on it below!)
- Lists of candidates in the Greater Victoria area and Nanaimo.
- Information on where and when to vote Saturday.
- Who can vote and what you need to take with you.
- Plus all of the news stories we've had about the elections.
On Saturday, you'll be able to find the election results as well — we'll be posting results from a feed sourced from CivicInfoBC as the data becomes available.
A note about the Position Primer. We started off the election season by asking people what kind of information they wanted to see (a big thanks to everyone who took part — we received more than 250 responses!). Many people said they would like to see a table-like format where they could easily compare candidates' views on issues.
So when we got the responses to our candidate questionnaires (an even bigger thanks to everyone who took part — we appreciate the time you put into answering!), we tried to do just that.
Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out the as hoped, and many of you let us know that you found the table charts hard to navigate.
The search was on for a better way, and the interactive Position Primer and its related tools (here and here) were born.
I love the way they allow you to easily search by municipality, position and topic to find candidates' answers to some of our questions — and I hope you do, too! I'd love to hear what you think.