Posted September 24, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: News
This will be the final post on this site.
I have registered BC2013.com, where discussion can commence with respect to the provincial political scene, likely by year’s end. Thank you for your participation and attention.
Comments Off
Posted July 9, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: News
One of the less talked-about aspects of elections is the election financing return. Candidates have three months (August 10, 2009) to file their expense returns, which also includes sources of revenues.
Elections BC will be hiring three temporary positions (starting September 8, 2009 to July 31, 2010) that will pay $18/hour to do the very tedious work of reviewing election expenses. (Detailed job posting).
Asking if candidates have been involved with any partisan activities should be part of the interview – somebody zealous (on either side) could make the lives of particular candidates quite miserable, especially if they were close to the spending limit.
Comments Off
Posted June 8, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: News
The BC Liberal and NDP MLAs have been sworn in; Vicki Huntington gets her own swearing-in session on Tuesday. On Wednesday, June 10, cabinet will be sworn in.
The next day of the legislature will be on August 25th, with the revised budget in on September 1st. It is no secret that the $495 million deficit will be significantly higher than expected, primarily due to a reduction of projected revenues. Current economic indicators highly suggest reductions in income, corporate and sales tax collections, property transfer taxes and natural gas royalties.
The government will face a huge challenge on whether they will deal with this by waiting out the economic storm and continue with higher deficits, whether they will raise taxes, or whether they will decrease spending. They have four years of political lee-way until the next election, so I would highly suspect the decisions they make will likely be unpopular politically, but good from a policy perspective.
Another minefield on the policy arena will be the negotiation of union contracts, most of which are due to expire after the 2010 Olympics.
Comments Off
Posted May 31, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: News
I will be waiting for the results of the judicial recounts before I post up final results and fancy maps. This also includes the definitive winners of the election predictions that were made.
On the government side, undoubtedly they are all looking at the fiscal situation and are going to announce something that most informed members of the public should have known on budget day – the government will be incurring a deficit much larger than the $495 million they projected. Given the economic variables we are seeing, it will likely be in the realm of $2 to $2.5 billion, assuming cuts in government expenditures.
Comments Off
Posted May 19, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: News
The earliest the MLAs can be sworn in is June 4th, so there are still two weeks and two days before anything can be formally done inside the government.
Final count starts on May 25th, and the results of final count will be on May 27th.
There is not too much that can be discussed between now and then, so if anybody here has some suggestions for topics, fire away.
I do intend on posting a discussion piece on voter turnout later this week.
Also, not surprisingly, web traffic to this site has died down considerably since the election period. I am not intending on “continuing” this site beyond its scope of covering the 2009 BC Election (and Referendum on Electoral Reform). If you wish to follow my writings elsewhere, I do write on my other weblog, Double Blind, although be warned that the site is mostly economics, mixed in with a little politics and other miscellaneous topics that come to mind.
Posted May 14, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: News
I have now created a Results page. I am not sure where this page is going, but for now it will contain tabular data on election results.
I do not wish to produce more work on this page until final count is concluded (as when the final count results come out, I would have to redo a lot of work).
Final count is scheduled for May 25, 2009.
Comments Off
Posted May 11, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: News
On May 12, 2009, from 8am to 8pm, you can vote in BC Election 2009. Please remember to vote. Elections BC can be contacted at 1-800-661-8683.
I will not be posting anything on this site on May 12th; however, comments will still be enabled on this post and the other posts on the site. I will not be moderating comments, so if you are posting links, please keep them to one link or less and your post will generally appear immediately (unless if you have been caught posting under multiple names with the same computer).
Helpful links:
Predictions:
Posted May 4, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: News
Hamish Marshall, research director for Angus Reid Strategies, has kindly accepted an offer for me to forward three questions from the commenters about election polling and the upcoming BC Election. If you wish to ask him a question, write a comment on this post. I will take what I deem to be the three best questions and send it to him.
No questions of a commercially sensitive nature, and keep it to the topic of polling in the BC Election.
The last Angus Reid Strategies poll on the BC Election can be found here.