Who's on first?

Almost every day, someone asks me who I think is going to win the election. And, almost every day, I answer honestly that I have no idea. The race is very tight and it's been hard to tell who exactly in the lead.

But, my city hall watcher friends, that's about to change.

Any minute now, we're expecting the results of an election poll to be delivered into our hot little hands. The Spec has commissioned a national polling company to take a pulse of who's in front of the mayor's race and what issues are important to Hamiltonians. We'll be running the mayoral results in tomorrow's paper (barring any unforseen circumstances) and will cover the polling issues next week.

In the meantime, who would you say is leading the mayor's race? And what do you think are the most important issues to Hamiltonians?

 

Comments

[Mahesh P. Butani]

Emma Reilly,
The Hamilton Spectator
Ontario, Canada

As a budding journalist, who has a long career ahead of you - can you look at yourself in the mirror and honestly ask yourself whether - you and your senior colleagues at the Hamilton Spectator have been fair and truthful in your coverage of the 2010 Election to date?

If you find yourself answering "yes" - you can safely tell yourself that the outcome of your commissioned poll is an accurate representation of the people's mayoral choices.

If you find yourself answering "no" - then you and your colleagues at the Hamilton Spectator are culpable of committing the biggest fraud in 'election journalism' that this country has ever witnessed.

I hope for your sake, you are jaded enough to pick the first answer - because you may not be able to bear the journalistic burden resulting from the second answer.

Your polls outcome is as predictable as your quality of journalism. It is indeed an extremely sad day for free and democratic elections in Canada.

For a Canadian newspaper to resort to the use of commissioned polls to validate its conscious acts of misinforming its readers - of the diversity of choice they actually had in this mayoral election, is akin to the burning of our Charter of Rights.

The next time you see election rigging and political subterfuge in a developing country, and you find yourself tempted to bear in with your morally superior Canadian perspective, please hold your peace - for you along with your senior colleagues at the Hamilton Spectator, from here on, have lost all moral authority to preach democracy to other developing nations.

Best Regards,

Mahesh P. Butani
www.ButaniForMayor.com

PS: Just in case you do exercise your right to not publish my comment here, I am exercising my right to publish this on my Facebook page and on other blogs.