Calgary: October 16, 2017

ONCE AGAIN NENSHI’S THE MAN

for mayor once again.

 

Calgarians proved themselves to be a tough bunch at what was undoubtedly a “banana republic” style of election, as one frustrated voter put it, in their determination to reelect Naheed Nenshi for a third term as Calgary’s Mayor or replace him with Bill Smith–a  lawyer and little known arch Tory who was formerly president of the Progressive Conservative Party.

With 58% of eligible voters managing to vote without being turned away for want of patience at the extreme polling lineups, where  waiting time prior to casting a ballot was often in excess of two hours, they managed to garner 55% of the votes cast with Naheed Nenshi taking 30% and Smith 25% of votes cast.

The details of the election results can be viewed by clicking HERE.

Thanks to unthinking bureaucrats, Calgary was the last municipality to post final election results throughout Alberta. 

Newspapers went to press only 90 minutes after the last polls were closed and only a handful of votes actually counted.  They could only list the results as “too close to call”.

One journalist at Metro News Tweeted at 2:30 am I’m finally going to bed now.  A global news commentator quipped “we’ll need our pjs for this one” HA  HA  to both of them and others.  Media began calling Mayoralty results at about 12:35 am without any ward results close enough to call.

The public consensus was that this is an absolute disgrace.

The cause was clearly the result of too few and understaffed polling stations with insufficient ballots available and in one case, not even enough ballot boxes!

City computer problems also aggravated the problem.