Who’s excited for a summer election?

I love elections!

As I have said many times before, I am a news junkie, and I am a diehard election junkie. As such, I will be following as much information as I can get during this Nova Scotia election scheduled for Aug. 17.

I have voted in every election (federal, provincial and municipal) that I was able to since I turned 21. That’s a lot of elections. I have worked on a few campaigns over time and I have worked for

Elections Nova Scotia and a couple of municipal elections. I even ran once — quite a few years ago.

Let me tell you, elections demand hard work. Candidates work hard getting their message out there, doing the door knocking (with a mask this time out, I expect), holding rallies — they can’t kiss babies these days but I imagine there will be sore elbows from all that bumping, making sure your team is doing its work and that the money is being properly handled, lots of phone calls and lots of emails. The very thought of all that makes me weary. You have to be very, very dedicated to want to be an elected person.

The worker bees in the campaign offices burn the midnight oil getting those signs out, making phone calls, arranging for those rallies to run smoothly, watching the money and holding the candidate’s hand when they falter from fatigue and wonder why the heck they agreed to do this.

The folks who run the elections in those offices in each constituency are heading off for training in Halifax. They will find out what the latest technology is being used, how to log every vote, how to solve problems, how to deal with the paperwork, how to deal with mail-in ballots, what to do with an inmate who wants to vote, how to get a new elector registered and how to deal with all those VICs (Voter Information Cards, usually yellow).

And then there are the issues.

You can bet your bottom dollar that each voter has their hobby-horse. While there may be general agreement on some of the big issues here in Nova Scotia — not enough family doctors, roads, jobs, roads, jobs, environment, jobs — each person would like something entirely different. These other issues may not even be ones that the provincial government is responsible for.

That doesn’t seem to matter. The cries will be heard. And with the internet and Facebook these days, we will hear them all. And we will hear the nasties and the uglies and the libellous and the slanderous and the ignorant.

I hope that every eligible voter is voting this time. We disgrace the name of democracy if we don’t vote. And then the old saying “you get the government you deserve” becomes real.

By the way, I would like to recommend three books by Graham Steele about politics and Nova Scotia in particular — What I Learned About Politics, The Effective Citizen and Nova Scotia Politics: 1945-2020.

Mr. Steele has a good head on his shoulders and writes in a very readable way.