Tag Archives: yegvote

Edmonton Election 2010: Visualizing Results by Polling Station

By Mack D. Male ·

Ever wonder where the candidates in last month’s municipal election received the most support? Which parts of the city supported which mayoral candidates? After seeing the maps that were created for Calgary’s top three mayoral candidates, I wondered about the same kind of thing here. Local software developer Josh Kjenner was also interested, and he has been busy visualizing the results by polling station ever since.

Josh wrote an application called Metroview for the City of Edmonton’s Apps4Edmonton competition, a project which he spent about 60 hours on. The tool is implemented in Processing, a programming language and environment that Josh called “a really really intense Java library.” He returned to the project after the City of Edmonton released the final election results by polling station, and spent another 20 hours or so improving it. Josh told me the biggest challenge he faced was conditioning the KML files from the open data catalogue (a common challenge that open data developers face…getting the data and the tools/technology working together).

The result is an interactive application that lets you visualize candidate support and other data on a map of Edmonton.

Here are a few of the data visualizations you can see in Josh’s metroview yegvote 2010 app (requires Java).

Eligible voters versus voter turnout:

Support for Stephen Mandel:

Support for David Dorward:

Support for Daryl Bonar:

You can see that Mandel received most of his support from the south part of the city, while Dorward received the most support from the north part. You can use the metroview tool to see similar results for every ward, public school ward, and catholic school ward too.

Thanks Josh for creating this tool! This is another great example of what can be created when the data is open and available.

UPDATE: It should be noted that you can’t really compare Mandel’s graph to Dorward’s. A dark area in Mandel’s is not equivalent to a dark area in Dorward’s, for example, because of the difference in the number of overall votes that each candidate received. The colors on each graph are in relation to the other areas on that graph for that candidate only. If you look at Josh’s app, you get the raw values as you hover over each area, and you can choose absolute instead of relative for the drawing mode.

Edmonton Election 2010: Unofficial Results

By Mack D. Male ·

It took a while for the data to start flowing but that only added to the excitement of the evening! A total of 196,661 ballots were cast by Edmontonians in this election, giving us a voter turnout of just over 34%. Here is your new City Council (unofficial until finalized on Friday by Edmonton Elections):

  • Stephen Mandel (Mayor)
  • Linda Sloan (Ward 1)
  • Kim Krushell (Ward 2)
  • Dave Loken (Ward 3)
  • Ed Gibbons (Ward 4)
  • Karen Leibovici (Ward 5)
  • Jane Batty (Ward 6)
  • Tony Caterina (Ward 7)
  • Ben Henderson (Ward 8 )
  • Bryan Anderson (Ward 9)
  • Don Iveson (Ward 10)
  • Kerry Diotte (Ward 11)
  • Amarjeet Sohi (Ward 12)

Here are your new Public School Trustees:

  • Cheryl Johner (Ward A)
  • Ken Shipka (Ward B)
  • Christopher Spencer (Ward C)
  • Dave Colburn (Ward D)
  • Heather Mackenzie (Ward E)
  • Michael Janz (Ward F)
  • Sarah Hoffman (Ward G)
  • Catherine Ripley (Ward H)
  • Leslie Cleary (Ward I)

Here are your new Catholic School Trustees:

  • Becky Kallal (Ward 71)
  • Larry Kowalczyk (Ward 72)
  • Cindy Olsen (Ward 73)
  • Debbie Engel (Ward 74)
  • John Acheson (Ward 75)
  • Marilyn Bergstra (Ward 76)
  • Laura Thibert (Ward 77)

You can see full election results at ShareEdmonton.

The closest race tonight was in Ward 2, where Krushell defeated Don Koziak by just 539 votes. Aside from that however, I think tonight’s result is a clear vote of confidence in the direction City Council had been moving under Mandel’s leadership.

Congratulations to all the candidates who ran in this election!

Envision Edmonton’s petition insufficient, City Centre Airport phased closure will continue

By Mack D. Male ·

Yesterday the declaration of the City Clerk was released, stating that the petition put forward by Envision Edmonton was not sufficient, for two reasons:

  • There were no more than 73,657 valid signatures.
  • The petition was not brought within 60 days of Council’s decision to close the airport.

According to the Municipal Government Act (MGA) that means that City Council was not required to take any notice of the petition. They debated the issue in their final meeting before the election, and voted 10-3 against including a question on the ballot. The vote breakdown was exactly the same as it was in July 2009, when Council voted in favor of a phased closure of the City Centre Airport. Here are some of the quotes from the meeting:

  • “The decision to not put a question on the ballot is the right one for Edmonton.” – Mayor Mandel
  • “For some unknown reason it took 11 months to get a petition.” – Mayor Mandel
  • “This needs to end.” – Mayor Mandel
  • “This motion is the same year late as the petition. This needed to happen last year.” – Councillor Iveson
  • “I am not prepared to support something that could lead to 42 years of inefficient operation.” – Councillor Anderson
  • “Somebody has to have the guts to say enough is enough.” – Councillor Henderson
  • “I am prepared to stand up and say I did eight months of research on this issue.” – Councillor Krushell
  • “Is this the only big decision we’ve made in the last three years?” – Councillor Sohi

In both the meeting and a media briefing, we learned more about the petition verification process.

  • Roughly 80 staff worked for more than 3700 hours to verify the petition. About 60 of those staff were hired specifically for the verification process.
  • One of the first things the City had to do was photocopy every page of the petition. The copies and the originals are now stored in a vault, where they will remain for at least 5 years.
  • It turns out Envision Edmonton did not contact the City Clerk about its petition. If it had done so, it might have learned about the 60 day requirement.
  • Had the petition been valid and sufficient, the outcome of the question would have been binding for ten years. If Council had decided to put a question on the ballot anyway, its outcome would not have been binding.
  • The total cost for the verification is estimated at between $125,000 and $150,000.
  • Banister Research was hired to help complete the verification, which they did via telephone.
  • The petition signatories (addresses) were compared against both the Edmonton Elections database (current as of 2009) and SLIM (Spatial Land Inventory Management).
  • Since the July 2009 decision, the City has incurred costs of $12 million, while ERAA has incurred costs of more than $23 million.

Links

Lots of people have written about this already. Here are some relevant links:

Resources

PDF Municipal Government Act (2.4 MB)

PDF Declaration of the City Clerk (689 KB)

PDF Report on the Petition (55 KB)

Final Thoughts

I don’t for a second think the battle over the City Centre Airport is finished. I’m sure we’ll see additional challenges and fights in the weeks and months ahead. Edmonton Airports seems to think so as well, launching Share The Facts today. I am confident that City Council made the right decision yesterday however, and I think they’ll be rewarded for it on October 18.

Closing the City Centre Airport is the right decision for Edmonton’s future. Yesterday was simply another step along the way to making that future a reality.