How I plan to vote in the Mountain Equipment Co-op election #MECelxn

[For 2013 MEC election endorsements see this 2013-03-18 post.]

[Post edited 2012-03-19 thru 2012-03-27 to reflect new info received.]

Breaking news 2012-03-21: Candidate Morrie Schneiderman has signed the Open Letter opposing the Special Resolution -- check it out at www.democraticcoop.ca! So I changed my voting plans below:

Summary:

I plan to vote for Drew Anderson, Mike Wearing, and Blair Hammond Morrie Schneiderman.

(I think Morrie Schneiderman Blair Hammond and Robert Campbell are also great candidates -- my 4th & 5th picks.)

I definitely plan to vote NO on the Special Resolution!

My main reason for the above votes: strengthening the connection between the board and MEC members. I asked all candidates their opinion on the Special Resolution. Opposing it is a major plus factor in my choice of who to vote for -- see Open Letter at www.democraticcoop.ca.

Vote NO on Mountain Equipment Coop Special Resolution @druojajay @mec

I am shocked that the directors of this great Canadian cooperative are proposing to give their appointed nomination committee veto power over any member nominees for director elections.

This blog post from Dru Oja Jay explains it well:
http://montreal.mediacoop.ca/blog/dru/10078

"...if any future board runs amok, it will be very difficult to displace them, because they can simply screen out any members which challenge their power."

Please vote NO on the MEC Special Resolution, and share this info with your friends. Thanks!

$5k for Student Media at ASUC Berkeley @asucpres @dailycaleditor @jrue

I'm looking forward to visiting U C Berkeley next week to meet people in the student union (ASUC), the newspaper (Daily Cal) and the School of Journalism.

On Monday Feb 27 I'm scheduled to meet ASUC President Vishalli Loomba, staff members Janice Crowder and Marilyn Stager, and Elections Council Chair Pamudh Kariyawasam. We'll discuss VoterMedia.org's offer of $5,000 in matching funds for the ASUC to try VoterMedia to improve voter information and engagement -- see briefing paper at votermedia.org/publications. Sample ballot at votermedia.org/asuc.

On Tuesday Feb 28 I'll meet with Daily Cal Editor Tomer Ovadia. I see he's co-proposing a referendum to raise student fees to fund the Daily Cal and other campus publications (Facebook event announcements here and here). Community funding for community media is a great idea! VoterMedia is similar to this plan, except that the funding is allocated by student voters through time, and any campus media can compete for funds. This keeps the media accountable to students -- see interviews of UBC students, including their newspaper editor, in video Mainstream Media vs Voter Media.

The ASUC allocates over $50k annually to various student publications -- see 2011-2012 Budget. A VoterMedia competition is designed to support those media that create the most benefit for the student community per dollar cost. It's Participatory Budgeting for media.

On Thursday March 1, I'll talk with Susan Rasky's Political Reporting class at the School of Journalism. We'll discuss the media economics underlying the VoterMedia blog contest design, as outlined in Newspaper Sponsorship for Municipal VoterMedia. I'll also meet faculty members Jeremy Rue and David Cohn.

Newspaper Sponsorship for Municipal VoterMedia #bcmuni #bcpoli

[BTW in case you missed it, VoterMedia.org got some in-depth coverage at The Tyee the other day: A Math Wiz's Idea to Revive Local Journalism]

I recently drafted this proposal -- would appreciate your comments & advice. Summary is below; full 7-page version here.

Newspaper Sponsorship for Municipal VoterMedia

This paper proposes an experiment in political media reform, in which competing newspapers would jointly sponsor a blogging contest to cover a city government and community issues. The goal is to test whether the VoterMedia design for a blog contest will generate enough public interest journalism to make it worthwhile for municipal taxpayers to fund such competitions in the future. This could become a new source of revenue supporting journalism that covers not only cities, but also other voter communities, including democracies and corporations.

To give newspapers a near-term incentive to sponsor (in addition to the long-term incentive of a potential future revenue source), the competing blogs would be required to grant the sponsors non-exclusive rights to publish their blog posts, with attribution and link-back. To simulate a taxpayer-funded competition, entry would be as open as possible, admitting any individual, group, or organization. This would include amateur bloggers and professional journalists, whether free-lance or on staff of a sponsoring (or non-sponsoring) newspaper. So for example, sponsors could enter the competition and try to win some of their money back. The contest should therefore be administered independently from the sponsors.

VoterMedia.org (a nonprofit project) is offering to administer the proposed competition for free, including hosting the voting -- see for example votermedia.org/burnaby. The VoterMedia contest design has been tested and refined for the past five years at the University of British Columbia's student union, and in some municipal elections in Metro Vancouver, Canada. Experimental results at UBC are discussed by participants in video interviews at votermedia.org.

[Complete 7-page proposal here]

New video: Expand VoterMedia to Municipal Politics #bcmuni

We just released a video: Expand VoterMedia to Municipal Politics

In it, UBC students (and a poli sci professor) discuss the idea of VoterMedia blog competitions that cover municipal governments. They have already had a positive effect on UBC student union politics -- see video How VoterMedia Affects Election Campaigns. A quote from Andrew Carne (Blogger, UBC Insiders):

You get these smaller media outlets, that actually do their own investigative work, they are able to present a different outlook on a story than the mainstream media does. So you get different opinions out there, and you may even get more facts, and information, than you do from the CBC or whoever's reporting.

We are pursuing two promising avenues for funding municipal blog contests:

• Participatory Budgeting -- a global reform movement that lets voters allocate part of municipal budgets.
• Sponsorship by newspaper publishers.

Here's a current muni contest ballot: votermedia.org/burnaby

$1,000 for UBC blogs #amselections

The University of British Columbia's Alma Mater Society is sponsoring a $1,000 VoterMedia blog contest to encourage coverage of their annual elections this month. See:

• Entry form and contest info
• UBC blogs on continuous votermedia ballot
• AMS Elections web page

VoterMedia as Participatory Budgeting

I'm excited about the possibilities for adding votermedia to the menu in the growing global participatory budgeting (PB) movement. So I drafted this paper and submitted it to the March 2012 International PB Conference in New York City.

Related links:

• Wikipedia: Participatory Budgeting
• Global map of PB projects
• The conference in New York will be at the same time as the final vote in the PB in NYC process