Peter Sobot, a Catholic secondary school student found a way to give hometown elections a boost in Burlington, Canada, about 60 kilometers west of Toronto.
Sobot created BurlingtonVotes2006.com. The new website educates voters about which candidates are running in each ward, what their platforms are, and makes it fun to participate in municipal election campaigns. The public can read about the candidates running for election and re-election in the November 13 municipal race, and can actually cast a vote for the candidate of their choice online.
When we checked in on the site yesterday, voting was brisk with more than 500 votes cast, for a variety of candidates. Even though the site has only been posted for one month, 5,000 people have already visited BurlingtonVotes2006.com.
“I came up with the idea after the last federal election,” Sobot said. “I saw that in the federal election, there were signs everywhere. People were making a big deal of it, and for good reason. However, when I heard about the Burlington municipal election, there were few big signs, and there seemed to be much less interest in the municipal election than the federal one. So I decided to make BurlingtonVotes2006.com to try to get people interested in the municipal level of government because the municipal election is just as important as the federal election.”
BurlingtonVotes2006.com has caught on with candidates vying for election, seven of whom have already taken ads with Burlington’s youngest entrepreneur.
Photo by CanadaFreePress.com.
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