Election Night in Regina

We had an election in our town last night. In fact most, if not all people in Saskatchewan municipalities went to the polls yesterday to elect their civic leadership.

In Regina nine candidates ran for outgoing mayor Pat Fiacco's soon to be vacant spot. It was a bit of a dog's breakfast to be honest. A lot of people were obviously very unhappy with the current administration and it was nice to see so many throw their hats into the ring to attempt at least to draw attention to the shortcomings of those running our city.

Problem is of course, the die was cast for the one status quo candidate. He must have been ecstatic. And why not. It worked wonders for him.  As a bonus, we the voters got a real chance to see our flawed democracy at work. You would think that those in opposition to the way things were being run, would have thought of what would happen as they split the vote.

. Those opposition candidates got 58% of the vote.Instead all nine stayed in the race and the vote was split every which way. Had the only two credible candidates in opposition got together and run one candidate, that person most likely would be mayor today. The second and third candidates combined,earned more votes than the winner who was elected with 42% of ballots cast.

So in the end Regina's new mayor is Michael Fougere elected with about 21,000 votes in a city with a population of close to 210,000.

Democracy at work.

Not something I'd crow about.