THE VISION NOMINATION

Oldtown News
Vancouver, BC


THE VISION NOMINATION


Tomorrow is the big day for the Visionistas as they board buses, party on the drive and juice their way over to the Croatian Cultural Centre where three Men are vying to become the Mayoral candidate to take on Councillor Peter Ladner.

The lead up to the Vision nomination has been short on politics and big on membership sign-ups.

According to Vision they have close to 13,000 members but how many of these members will actually show up to vote on Sunday, June 15 is anyone's guess. Probably not a huge number if the day starts out sunny and warm.

It's only a feeling but I expect 4,000-5,000 Vision members will actually vote and if my projection is accurate, Vision may choose to only provide percentage numbers of the top two candidates instead of an actual vote tally. This saves Vision any embarrassment since they have gleefully gloated over how many members they have and by extension, how popular a party they are. As my readers may know, 15 year old and non-voting citizens are able to join Vision and vote in the nomination process although they cannot vote in the municipal election.

So what happens tomorrow you may ask. Well like everyone else I'm uncertain who may win but I have a hunch who might. I could be wrong or I could be right. Of course, I like to remind folks, Oldtown News, picked Councillor Ladner when most mainstream press outlets continually projected that Mayor Sam Sullivan would easily beat Mr. Ladner and Councillor Ladner prevailed.

Based on 4,000 - 5,000 members voting at the Vision nomination meeting and because Vision claimed an original membership of 2,000 and if 11,000 new members signed up-- I suspect that a good chunk of those original two thousand members may be in the camps of Councillor Raymond Louie and Park Commissioner, Allan De Genova. In fact, I would give Councillor Louie, 1000 of those members with Mr. De Genova taking 600 while Mr. Robertson can lay claim to 400.

If you factor in another 10,000 members and with MLA Gregor Robertson claiming 5,000 of those new sign-ups which leaves about 5,000 for Mr. Louie and Mr. De Genova.

If Mr. Louie and Mr De Genova evenly split those 5,000 new members, Mr Louie will likely have 3500 potential votes and Mr. De Genova will carry a potential of 3,100 memberships into the nomination.

If 50 percent of Mr. Robertson's supporters turn-out, this would give him a base of 2,500 votes and if you throw in around 400 more of the original 2000 members which is entirely possible and 50 percent of them vote, Mr. Robertson would have 2700 potential votes he can tap into.

Councillor Louie most likely enjoys the support of 1000 of the old Vision members and if you add in 2500 new voter sign-ups this gives him a projected total of 3500 votes. Mr. Louie most likely would bring in at a minimum 50 percent of those votes which gives him 1750 votes, however, he is an ethnic candidate so turn-out for him could be much stronger considering he could wind up being this first Chinese candidate to run for Mayor of Vancouver.

Mr De Genova most likely will bring in 50 percent of his supporters so he would have a potential 1550 votes.

Mr. Louie even if he only brings out 50 percent of his pool of votes, he winds up with 1750 votes which would put him in second place and that is exactly where he wants to be.

And if by chance, Mr De Genova comes in 3rd place, his 2nd place preference votes would most likely go to Mr. Louie although a number of them may go to Mr. Robertson. For Mr. Robertson to prevail over Mr. Louie he would need to obtain at least 200 of Mr. De Genova's votes and the likelihood of that happening isn't strong.

Mr Louie most likely will receive 3150 votes and the nomination.

Even though there are many variables involved in nominations, however, just for fun, I'm going out on a limb and projecting Councillor Raymond Louie to be the winner tomorrow.

Imagine that!

Jamie Lee Hamilton
tricia_foxx@yahoo.com