I had a high school teacher, Brother Martin, who used to snarl at the class, "Too much is enough!" when things started getting out of hand. I'm starting to feel that way about municipal election information.
Recently my inbox has been bombarded with so much municipal election stuff that I want to scream like the old Brother, "Enough already, I just can't take any more."
This all started when a Facebook friend joined me up to get the "Squamish Speaks" Facebook feed. The group identified itself as "A place to connect, engage, discuss, ponder and act for positive future development of Squamish."
A noble objective. So, for the first few days, I was happy to get information from both candidates and active community members. I read the posts and followed the comments, and I thought to myself, "Wow, social media really might be able to bring about the equal access to information that democracy relies on if it is to be effective."
But there's a problem with equal access. It also means that anyone who wants to say anything can. Facebook and other social media have already been exposed for this fundamental flaw. Hey, if you want equality, that means for all, even those you don't want to hear from - like the guy who feels compelled to tell you that he eats polenta every Wednesday.
"Squamish Speaks" has not yet devolved into that, thankfully, but one day I opened my email and found 20 Facebook notifications from "Squamish Speaks."
Were they interesting, thoughtful and/or informative? Maybe, but I'll never know because in a fit of pique, I simply screamed out loud, deleted them all, and swore never to go onto "Squamish Speaks" again.
Of course, social media only highlights a fundamental problem with our electoral system: how do candidates get their message heard? This year, 15 candidates are running for the six seats available for council. Each of those has to struggle to get his or her message out in a clear and articulate way and rise above the din of the other 14 voices. How to do this?
Traditional methods are not really effective: flyers generally don't get read and quickly become landfill, door-to-door knocking is inefficient, which leaves all-candidates' meetings.
And Facebook is to all-candidates' meetings as Google is to a 1967 World Book encyclopedia. The all-candidates' meeting is the biggest time-suck of any public event in the election (and this from someone who gets to moderate the SORCA-sponsored all-candidates' meeting on Nov. 9). Here again, the clash between time and information becomes insurmountable. No candidate really has the time to answer questions thoughtfully, so each tries to throw out a few memorable tag-lines that he or she hopes sticks with the voters.
So what's a concerned and conscientious elector to do? Well, a couple of things, I think: First, know that you don't have to vote for six candidates. If you're only sure of one, two or three, then vote for those. Second, don't be afraid to ask the advice of people whose opinion you value. We can't all be expert in all things Squamish, but some people are quite in tune with the goings-on in the community. If you know they're like-minded, then ask them who they are supporting. It's still all a little too much, but elections shouldn't make you scream.
