Peter Milczyn interviewed at his campaign headquarters, July 29, 2013. Only the cameraman showed up. The reporter asked questions on speaker phone.
No posts in the last few weeks because I was working on Peter Milczyn's campaign in the Provincial by-election. It was a great experience. The best part was scrutineering. I got to watch the votes counted on my poll and was responsible for checking the count and challenging any ballots I saw as invalid. None were. We won my poll, but lost the election. From my lowly viewpoint as a volunteer (volunteers get the mushroom treatment), the vote was decided by Liberal voters who elected to punish us by staying home. I managed to turn out less than half the Liberal voters in my poll. On the other hand, Conservatives came out in droves.
Yet it was a respectable loss; 46.6% for Holyday, 40% for Milczyn. Turnout was a bit above average for a by-election: ~35%. I made a complete fool of myself by saying we would win despite the polls. I could see we had the votes, and thought we could turn them out with our superior ground game. That was spectacularly wrong. I had slipped into magical thinking.
There were many funny and interesting things that happened. Like the man who wouldn't vote for Peter because he didn't like his neigbours's fence. Or the woman who screamed that I'm an asshole, just like her son. One man called me a dictator for knocking on his door. The best conversation was with a voter who wanted me to tell him if it was OK to put diesel in his gas car. I thought not, but he advised that you could get away with 20% and wanted my views about going to 30%.
Here are a few pictures:
An apartment door in Maybelle. Pat's in deep shit.
Toronto Hydro's attitude to danger.
