[Previous entry: "what's up with the new Macs?"] [Next entry: "unfortunate alchemy"]
06/29/2006: "it was easy, being Green"
Last night was the joint annual general meeting for the Green Party for the Kitchener Centre and Kitchener-Waterloo ridings (a.k.a., electoral district associations). I was nominated for a position on the executive for my riding, and after a long and hard race (against "None of the above") I was duly elected. So there you have it - now I'm the Fundraising chair for the local Green Party. Go, me!
It wasn't just an AGM last night, it was also a fundraising event. To that end, it was arranged to have Jim Harris (current, and outgoing leader of the federal Green Party) speak at our event, open to the public.
Jim's talk was very interesting. Some highlights:
- the Green Party is at 9% popular support according to a recent poll: that's a tie with the Bloc Quebecois, that has 52 seats in parliament
- the Green Party is fiscally efficient, spending only $0.86 for every vote it got, in comparision to over $5 per vote for the NDP and over $3 per vote for the Liberals
- CBC has agreed that politicians will not have a say in whether the Green Party is included in the next round of leader's debates in the next election (not as good as saying we'll be included, but a great start)
- the CBC ombusdman receives approximately 3600 complaints a year from across Canada; they received 50,000 complaints about the exclusion of the Green Party from the leader's debates
- ridings that got one piece of Green Party literature to every household increased their vote count from between 60% and 220%
Essentially, the Green Party is on the cusp of making great gains. Our task, as EDA executives, is to fundraise in order to be able to get at least one piece of literature to every household in our EDA. The riding that saw an over 200% increase in their showing managed to get one piece of literature to every household, and a second piece to half. Exposure equals votes!
So, as Fundraising chair, I gotta get funds coming in to pay for the literature. Every brochure costs about $0.03. If delivered by volunteers (as I did in the last election - about 1600 of them) that's the full cost. Or, we can pay Canada Post about $0.07 apiece to get it to every household instead.
I've got my work cut out for me!
