Wednesday, September 30, 2009

I wish I were paid for conducting an internet poll

Last week, I decided to conduct an AV or STV style internet poll on who would be the best candidate for mayor of Toronto in 2010. I used the website DemoChoice to conduct my poll. That website let me include up to 32 names as potential candidates. The people I placed in my poll included well-known people outside of Toronto's city council such as John Tory and George Smitherman. I also included 29 of the 44 city councillors. I selected councillors that had name recognition. I also included private citizen Enza Supermodel Anderson because she's hot!

No one paid me nor suggested I conduct this poll on behalf of any candidate. It would have been an honour to have conducted this poll on behalf of a candidate; it would have been more of an honour to have been paid lots of money!

An unknown person emailed about my choice of potential candidates. I guess I didn't satisfy him/her.

I will be conducting a new poll sometime around January when potential candidates start to confirm their candidacy for mayor of Toronto. In my current poll, I did not list former Winnipeg mayor, Glen Murray, who now lives in Toronto. I only found out after I started the poll that he might become a candidate.

Here is the letter from the unknown commenter, Undivulged Name:

"Dear "Skimpy": (as in applying as little thought as possible to creating this "poll" without lots of spaces for write-in names, or an apology for offering a premature group of names).
But then, maybe guys like you prefer to vote for a NAME. There will be, obviously, other as-yet undeclared potential candidates out there, even one quite interesting one I've already heard of who's not on your list.
C'mon, skimpy...are you trying to damn us to another four years of spinning our wheels? Or are you perhaps in the pay of someone on the list?
It's time to wake up and smell the coffee. THIS ISN'T A POPULARITY CONTEST. We're not choosing a NAME; we're choosing the LEADERSHIP OF OUR CITY.
Investigate closely every single one of the names you have proposed, and you'll find out how (--unlike a real prize candidate who will hopefully step forward, and who will be necessary to do the job properly--) shallow your list is for the role of leader of this city: no thought-through ideas (a.k.a. "vision"), no leadership potential or concept of a citizen-centered development of the third or fourth largest city in North America. Not one.
Your kind of choice is reminiscent of how we got Miller last time. Let me remind you. The media gave the city three choices, based upon each only having a NAME: an ineffectual former council member that turned out to have nothing to offer, a former president of the Liberal party that kept telling the media that he didn't want to be elected, and an incumbent who had done little to nothing for the past three years. The media finally "hijacked" that election down to one choice, and told us who to vote for in its headlines.
Like you're trying to do in your little exercise. Get real! When the time comes to register the candidates, there will be a couple of dozen names on the list you never even heard of. I for one want to know who the best person for the job is.
Don't you?
NO? OK, then YOU vote for a NAME, Skimpy. And while you're at it, why don't you tell us all which NAME should be included on OUR list of possibilities? During the election, Skimpy, be sure to ignore all but three or four of any other declared candidates so we don't get sidetracked away from your choices when you're telling us who to consider. This is a nice head start. "

4 comments:

ADHR said...

On the other hand, isn't it nice to know you have such tremendous power over Toronto?

Skinny Dipper said...

I love the power and adulation, but I wish I had the money. :)

Jon said...

Yeah, I'd take the money, too. Atleast you're getting paid in mad ravings. It was a rather funny read.

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