Shaun Newman Podcast - SNP/WS Roundtable #1

Episode Date: September 9, 2022

The first "pilot" roundtable in collaboration with the Western Standard. Sat down with three political nerds: Mike Dalke, David Parker & Vitor Marciano to discuss the month ahead in the UCP election. We discussed: - Key dates   - The oddities of the current race - Preferential ballot & whether to vote one or seven - How can Danielle Smith run while not being a sitting MLA - The tactic of limiting in person voting. November 5th SNP Presents: QDM & 2's.   Get your tickets here: https://snp.ticketleap.com/snp-presents-qdm--222-minutes Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500

Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Thursday night. I don't think I drew up this plan three years ago to where now there's a podcast coming on every single day. But either way, if you're sitting here tonight, I appreciate you hopping on. If you went to the Western Standard, obviously you ain't listening to this. So I appreciate you guys all coming on. Just a note, we recorded this Wednesday. So it is a pre-record. And in the course of 24 hours, Taves, Gina here, and Sonny had a press conference denouncing the Alberta Sovereignty Act. I found it interesting. Rebecca Schultz, not a part of it. Todd Lowen, not a part of it. And obviously, they didn't invite Daniel Smith. So that is excluded from our discussion today or tonight, well, because it wasn't yesterday when we were recording. So either way, that's something to keep an eye on. This is a new idea. It's an idea I've had roundtable discussions happening each week. And with the Western Standard,

we've signed on for four pilot episodes. I got pilot episodes in quotation marks because obviously if nobody listens to it, nobody likes it, we won't do it. But if you enjoy it, let me know. If you have some ideas for roundtables, you know, some pressing matters that you think you'd love to hear a group of people discuss,

let me know. Either way, the text line is open. The number is in the show notes. I'm always available for your comments. Nothing's changed there. Regardless, I look forward to hearing what you guys have to say after tonight's Thursday night roundtable, which can be found for the time being on the podcast or at the Western Standard. Either way, enjoy this group of, I believe they call themselves political nerds as we discussed the UCP race

and the days that are ahead before October 6th. So, without further ado, buckle up because here we go. What's up, guys? It's Kid Carson. This is Alexandra Kitty. This is Danielle Smith. Hey, everybody. This is Paul Brandt.

Jeremy McKenzie, Ragingdissident.com. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Well, welcome to the Sean Newman Show on the Western Standard to the podcast listener. That's going to be a little, they're going to have to, you know, clean out their ears. That is right. It is live on the Western Standard. Instead of the podcast, which is behind my head, it's the Sean Newman Show. So welcome aboard.

And I got to welcome aboard three guests for the inaugural roundtable here. on the on the on the Sean Newman show Mike Dalky David Parker and Vitor Marciano so fellas first off thanks for hopping on with me thank you for a bonus thank you now now uh to the there's there's going to be two forms of this obviously a few people are going to watch your names are sitting there for everybody to see who they're who they're listening to but if they are hopped on to the podcast and are only listening to your voice I want to start with just a little background quick short however however you know long short you want to go

And we'll start with Mike. We'll go around the table and then we'll hop into what today is going to be about. A little bit of the UCP election here as we inch closer to October 6. So we'll start with Mr. Mike Dolke. Yeah, sure. So Mike Dolke here. I've been around conservative politics for quite some time. Really got into it during the leadership race with Jason Kenney and his unification of the party.

From that, I kind of got myself. involved in some campaigns here in South Edmonton, became kind of a little bit of a political strategist, worked with Casey Medea in South Edmonton to actually get him elected as our only MLA in Edmonton, both as his president in Southwest, as well as his campaign manager for a little bit of time. Now I have kind of rolled my dice at some other parts, worked on the municipal election trying to help conservatives have a voice here in Edmonton. Unfortunately, it didn't go as well as we thought it would go. Only got one candidate elected in the last election. So we were a little disappointed by that, but still working to build a conservative bastion here in Edmonton. And so in the

meantime, I've got myself back into some candidates' opportunities. So we've been working with Castle Downs. So now the president in Castle Downs here in Edmonton. And I'm working with our candidate, John Zadig, who used to be the city councilor here. here in Edmonton to hopefully getting elected as the next UCP member of the legislature over there in Castle Downs. And then on the side, I do a little work, obviously strategizing for a lot of teams. So a couple teams have approached me during the leadership race. And so right now I work quite heavily with the Todd Lowen campaign and helping them

with some strategies and moving forward with them. So that's kind of who I am and what I do. We'll switch over to Mr. David Parker. Hey everyone. My name is David Parker. For those of you don't know me, I'm the executive director of Take Back Alberta, co-host of the Canadian Story, and an entrepreneur from Central Alberta,

who's been a political organizer since about 18 and just very interested in teaching people about how democracy in our province works so they can take back control of their institutions that I think a lot of them don't think represent. present their views or values anymore. And finally, Vitor Marciano. Ah, I'm Vitor Marciano.

I've been kicking around federal and provincial politics in Alberta for, oh, 22 years. I started off, frankly, like David, like Mr. Doggy, as a volunteer. And in the early 2000s, I became sort of one of the key organizers in the, in the Edmonton area for the federal party, served on that first federal National Council. In 2010, Danielle Smith asked me to stop doing federal work and professionalize the Wild Rose Party, so I was its first professional executive director and then served as one of Danielle's senior advisors and her press secretary. I was around when Brian Jean came back

and put Wild Rose back together again in 2015. And I've been doing politics ever since. I've been a campaign manager. I've been a strategist. I'm a jack of all trades. I know a bunch of these different technical things. And I've also been, you know, a senior executive at the federal party nationally and the executive director of one of the precursor parties provincially. So I know both the political strategic side and the administrative paperwork gets stuff done side of parties. So I have some insights on some of this stuff. Well, I appreciate you fellas exploring an idea with me I was born and raised in Saskatchewan the listeners of the podcast certainly know that but anyone on the Western Standard side This is my first you know election in Alberta essentially and so I've been monitoring it very closely shall we say and that's why I appreciate you guys hopping on and and

From now on I talk about it being ping pong you know where I asked Mike a question then he brings it back to me and then Dave and blah blah At any time feel free to hop in and and share some thoughts this is around table it's a virtual roundtable but a roundtable nonetheless i've been watching this and talking to people such as all three of you about the hundred and twenty three thousand nine hundred and 15 ucp members that's what's going to decide uh give or take um the upcoming election which is going to be decided on october sixth um when you look at the numbers fellas 60 plus thousand new members since may is that normal does this happen every election that you just get a big swell of members like this, or is this maybe kind of due to circumstances? And I'll fire at Vitor to start,

but David and Mike, please hop in as we roll along with this. Leadership race has always bring out extra people. So the UCP being at $1,000, $125,000 isn't really a surprise. In all honesty, if it hadn't happened in the summer, it would have been bigger. If it had if the party hadn't restricted the sales of memberships to just people using their own personal credit card or personal check, it would have been bigger. They actually did things that probably stopped the party from growing as much as it could have. Sorry, Vitor. Why do you say summer? What's big about the summer, fellas?

People go to their lives. Yeah, they want to go on vacation. Most people can't be bothered to care about politics. and if you ask them to bother to care, ask them to bother to care when they want to be at the beach or at the cottage or in their RV camping, they're not interested. Even with the hardest two years behind us,

even with everything that's going on, you're telling me this is just standard operations for politics, 60,000 plus new members, doubling the size of the party. That's standard. The fact that summer, they probably would have been higher, all these things. I'll give you an example.

Aaron O'Toole, who most people would say couldn't even have inspired, you know, like didn't win. Let's just say you didn't win. Even then they doubled the membership for the leadership. Like that leadership with Peter McKay and Aaron O'Toole federally, they doubled the membership. Now, what Pierre Polyev has done has been shocking. That's unprecedented.

It's movement level. But I don't think you could say that doubling of the membership. is very shocking, no. No, I would agree 100%. Not everyone is a political junkie like the rest of us here on this roundtable, and we don't spend our time checking podcasts and watching all sorts of news articles. I mean, I watched the Notley News Conference today, I think was the only one watching it today.

But, I mean, the fact of the matter is, you know, people like us, we get into this. The average, Albertan, they want to go to the lake. They want to spend time with their family. The benefit of having seven candidates, though, in this leadership election, is that there are seven candidates selling memberships. I think, honestly, the numbers probably would have been much lower if we didn't have all seven candidates. So we are pretty lucky that we do have seven candidates, even though it has kind of muddied the waters, so to speak. So I'm the green guy. Everybody says nobody's political junkies like us.

But fellas, look on the wall. They're hockey jerseys. I didn't get two shits about this like six months ago. You're telling me I'm sitting here and my eyes are still shut to what actually happens in politics. Like I have no clue. Yes. And political parties are and political people are who normal people hire to do politics. And most of the time, normal people don't give a damn about politics.

I mean, I think there's an American stat that the average American thinks about federal politics for about one and a half minutes a week. And it's less for state politics and municipal politics. and that applies to Canada as well. So normally they just don't care. And it's not that they don't care. They don't care enough to involve themselves and they trust that those of us who are involved in politics will make enough right decisions

that it won't stress them out too much. But that's changed in the last two years. A whole bunch of people who thought they didn't care about politics discovered that politics cared about them. And all of a sudden, if they weren't paying attention, they could find themselves losing their rights, losing their privileges, having to adjust for things. So that created a whole series of stressors for them. But yeah, this is going to be new.

It's going to be interesting as we try to get new uninvolved people in. It's going to be important that we don't turn them into cynics. It's going to be important that we do one of the things that, David's promise to do with TBA, which is to educate them in the civics of Canadian politics. I'm always amazed at how many quasi-political people, people who are just starting to get political, are actually a little bit more aware of American politics than Canadian politics. We political parties, politicians, the media, all do a brutal job of educating Canadians on what's possible and what's going on out there.

And so therefore, you know, most of the time they don't care. And that's why, you know, in a general election, provincially, you know, 50% of people don't vote. It's not that they don't care. They trust that the 50% of people who are paying more attention than them can make a good decision. Well, and Vitor, I want to hit on this a little bit. Like, let's just talk a bit of how hard it is to get people involved.

I just want the three of us to discuss for a moment, just how hard it is to get people to spend 10 bucks to buy a, membership. I don't think people comprehend the amount of work that the people like the three of us put into to just get a couple hundred people to go and vote. You recently had a

nomination meeting in Red Deer North here for Adrienne LaGrange to Education Minister. And there were a lot of people that were mad at the Education Minister. But I tell you, 400 people in Red Deer North could not be bothered to show up to voter out. There were 900

members and only 500 some of them voted but doesn't it take a somebody uh organized uh to to put their hat in the ring to organize it put a lot of effort and then i feel like for a lot of people it just feels like it doesn't matter you you elect whoever and then they they say one thing and the next day they go do a completely different thing and you're like okay well that that didn't work the only thing i see changing and maybe i'm wrong maybe i'm agreeing to this too fellas you know as i sit and I interview all the candidates and I have them on stage and I hear them say the same things. I feel like media doesn't hold them accountable right now, and that is changing, like very, very fast.

Now, if we go back through history, there's different times. It's a little bit of a cycle where media slowly becomes complicit, whether we go back to the paper or the radio or you can do the math. Anyways, and with the internet, the fact we're able to do shows like this, it feels like we're hitting another point where if politicians stand up, say one thing, and then two months later are doing the complete opposite, they're going to get absolutely fried. And saying that, Justin Trudeau or a fearless leader of this country gets to say whatever he wants and just walk away for at least the time being.

I mean, the average Albertan, the average Canadian, the average person has lost trust in their politicians. That is across the board. I think you can go anywhere in Canada and you can ask any person and ask them, what do you think of your politician? And they say, I don't trust them anymore. And I think that's pretty damning. And so now people are angry and governments are overthrown because of anger.

We love governments that do very little and affect our lives at zero to none. when we see a government that gets their hands in the wrong cookie jars, so to speak, and are frustrating us as everyday Albertans, we want to make a difference. And I think we saw that with the leadership review with Jason Kenney. There were a lot of angry Albertans that said, you know, I'm willing to drive down to Red Deer and vote and get rid of Jason Kinney. And I think TBA was a big proponent of pushing that narrative on people.

But I think now that we've kind of moved out of that, that now we don't have that so to speak baddie that we're looking at the the person that we can blame everyone on everything on i think people are may become apathetic to to the cause and like vitor said maybe just trust that the rest of us will do their our due diligence and vote the right person in well i certainly hope uh i hope you're right because i feel like more people are tuning in than ever but maybe it's just people such as myself that kind of had their their hopes that everybody was doing right and then all of a sudden we're in what we're in and everybody's going on earth is happening. You know, fellows with

124,000, just shy of that, 123 and change, people that are registered. So for the folks listening, if you registered for a membership before August 12th, you can vote in the upcoming election. September 2nd, the ballots were sent out, so, you know, if

you've got one in the mail, you don't got one in the mail. By September 14th, they're saying if you don't have one, that's when you've got to start to get worried regardless. What are you expecting with mail-in ballots? the fact that on October 6th from 8 to noon in only five locations, Slave Lake, Eminton, Red, Deer, Calgary, Tabor, what are you expecting for voter turnout in this? I assume this is unusual.

It's never been had a premier step down before. I mean, we have. But this feels pretty unusual to me, but maybe what do you guys think on voter turnout? And then just overall, the locations, not in person, there's a lot of. questions there. I'll run with it and then I let everybody else run with it. But here's my math. And I'd love to hear your guys' math. My math is we're sitting at about 60 to 63% of the federal members of will be voting in the leadership on the federal race. So that's with Pierre Pauliev, Robin Bieber, Jean-Shererre. That federal race, it's done now. All the votes are in. It's about

430,000 votes, 420, 430. So I don't think we're going to see a higher turnout in the provincial leadership race than we saw in the federal one. And there's 123, 124, as you said, 123 and change, or whatever it is. 123, 915. Right. So if that's the case, then I don't see more than 75,000 people loading in this thing, to be honest. Oh, I don't. I think you're high, honestly.

I think you're going to see maybe a 50% voter turnout in the cities, if that, if you're lucky. Again, we're hitting that time of the year where people are just getting back into the groove of things. You know, work is going. They couldn't be bothered, especially if there's only one polling station in your whole city. And let's be honest, you know, that's if you live in Edmonton. If you have to drive the slave lake from Fort McMurray to vote, do you think you're going to drive in and vote? and how many people really trust the mail-in ballot right now. I think we could see maybe 60% in rural Alberta,

just because they're more pissed off than everyone else. But I think when it comes to the actual voter turnout, if we see if 55%, I'd be amazed. So 55, let's just put that in perspective, 55%, 50% of 120 is 60,000, right? And five more would be, you're looking at he's thinking 66 67,000 as a max as a max and I don't think we're going to hit that I think that's a that's kind of a pipe dream Vitor what do you think I met 65,000 and and it's not a hundred twenty three in change they sent us a new list the other day so it's a hundred and twenty four in change oh so I got a wrong number perfect you got wrong number no but that was the old number that was the number now and no it'll be you know I think it'll be roughly 65,000

people voting. There's a couple of things that the people miss on this. Oftentimes, like, the number is in some ways a little padded because it's, you know, the husband or the wife is particularly political and they sign up, you know, their kids and their spouse who aren't as political and therefore

are less likely to vote and might be away at the time when it comes. And then when you combine the fact that they're making it next to impossible to vote in person, that's going to drop stuff down. The fact that the ballot it sort of arrived, started arriving now right after a long weekend. It is just when people are starting to pay attention, but it's just when people are starting to pay attention. It's not

two weeks from now when people are fully paying attention. You know, people are still coming out of the summer mode. The fact that the membership sales ended in August was really weird. The fact that the party structured the leadership race in such a way that it demanded a ton of money from the candidates early and in effect left all the campaigns, every single one, including the frontrunner in the campaign, short on money because they had to give away all their money to the party early. So the amount of money being spent in this leadership race is way less than the amount that was spent in 2017.

It's happening at the wrong time a year. It doesn't have anything, you know, it's working off of a smaller base than the federal race with Pierre. Pierre has, you know, five million dollars to spend across the country because he's been able to raise that much. And therefore, he's got tools at his disposal to lift the voter turnout. So that all of these things together lead me to believe that, yeah, will be a little bit better than 50% of the people voting, but not much. When you say August 12th was weird, what's weird about August 12th being the end cutoff for memberships? Are you saying that it should have been earlier, later?

It should have been later. You cut off the memberships really early and delayed the vote really late. I see this as a tactic, honestly, on the part of, let's call them the establishment. We can call them Jason Kenney's people. We can call them the old guard. Whatever we want to call them, the tactic is pretty simple. Make it as boring as possible. Because it's never good for an incumbent, let's say, when there's a lot of excitement around a race. because the incumbent is trying to maintain the status quo, while any new force, let's call it TBA, let's call it, Brian, Gene, let's call it any group of people that's trying to,

frankly, take over an organization, right, take over the leadership of an organization, which is what an election leadership is, is disadvantaged if people are bored not paying attention. Because excitement is what gets people rolling on these kind of things. You know, you talk about taking on the establishment with Mike here helping Travis, Todd Lowen. Todd Lowen's a guy who stood up. He's an independent.

Daniel Smith comes to mind. She's an outsider. They weren't in there. I mean, I can go on about all the candidates. The candidates are the candidates. I guess I look at it the opposite way. And I keep saying this analogy, and I apologize if we got any Calgary Flames fans listening. But with the Emmonson Oilers, forgive me, bringing sports.

in this. They had Jay Woodcroft. He comes in as a coach, you know, the others aren't doing that hot. He gets a short runway to have an opportunity to get the weather's into the playoffs, right? He does, and they become a hot team, and then they defeat the first round, maybe not the way they wanted to, but they're through it. Then the second round, they defeat the provincial rivals, and then, of course, they lose to the Colorado Avalanche. But now he's got a long contract. He's signed on that, and I look at the provincial election. Everything they're trying to do isn't working because I feel like there's a ton of hype around the seven candidates but maybe I'm wrong on that maybe that's in my own world it feels like that it feels like all the eyes are sitting on Alberta right now

and they have this runway where they're they're literally campaigning and then they get to have a few months where they're actually premier and then they campaign again and it's like a year long campaign I mean it's almost the right place you know the right perfect storm for whoever wins well so it's kind of like that I mean there are there are sitting MLAs that will likely receive a seat, but I mean, Daniel Smith still doesn't have a seat. She's going to have to run in a by-election if she wants to even form government. And so anything that she wants to do, she's going to have to do through somebody else. And we know, and to use your analogy with Jay Woodcraft, what would it be like if Jay Woodcroft was allowed to coach the Oilers,

but only from afar, and Dave Tippett got to keep the reins while they played the playoffs? It'd be very weird. And that's what we have going on right now. We have Jason Kenney sitting behind the scenes doing all sorts of stuff that we have no clue. I mean, the amount of times that he opens his mouth and basically he costs us municipal elections. I would say some of his comments that federally when we had the federal election cost us votes. There's a lot of things this guy has done to blow up the conservative movement. The question is, why are we continuing to give him rain to continue to blow up the conservative movement? And when you have a candidate like Daniel Smith, you know, how are you going to defend that when you have a leader that's going to

sit there and is likely going to be your deputy premier and not step down because he's got the power of all the MLAs? Well, that raises two questions. One, one, I assume it's in some way that it's written that this can happen. How can Daniel Smith run for the premier if she's not a sitting MLA? Oh, I can. She can't. She can.

And there's a tradition that you go get yourself a seat really fast. but Danielle, there's a seat available. Daniel says she's not running in that seat. So we've got a complication happening there. And there's a window, there's a time frame that they can call a by-election before an election. I mean, let's be honest, do you want to be the person that has to put a million dollars into a by-election prior to your election? No, you don't call it at all. You just hold it off until the, I would say you just hold it off.

But on that note, let's go. Whoa, whoa, let's finish this for a second. I'm still confused. That is not the tradition in Alberta. The tradition in Alberta is you get yourself a seat as fast as you can and get into the house so you can defend yourself. Right. And this is extra important when your first piece of legislation is super controversial and has everybody going, ah? And so, you know.

Well, not everybody, Vitori, be fair, be fair. To be fair. It has a bunch of people that don't even represent the majority of the membership going on. Well, we'll find out where the membership is. in the next of the while. But she's got to designate somebody to be her defender and her spokesman for this thing in November and December when it gets voted on. So if she wins, sorry, you've got to paint me a clear picture.

Some days, boys, I'm a little bit. I'll do it, Sean. I understand what you're going to ask. If she wins the Premier, right? She becomes Premier on October 6, but she's not assuming sitting MLA. What happens? Here, so I'll explain this. So in the Westminster system, being Premier actually doesn't

have anything to do with a seat in the legislature or parliament. What it does have to do with is, are you the leader of the party that has the most seats? If you are the leader elected by the membership, which is kind of thinking of it as a club, right? So if the head of the club is elected by the members of the club and that club has the most seats, then that person is the premier of the province. There's no legislation that requires that the premier have a seat. However, as Vitor pointed out, traditionally, they try to get a seat as fast as possible after that happens.

Now, most of the time, almost all of the time, they already have a seat. It's very rare. It doesn't happen very often that the leader of the party doesn't have a seat, but it has happened before. And as Vitor pointed out, they go to get a seat as fast as possible. So if she wins, can she interact with all the MLAs, everything? can she be like running the province or does she have to sit on the outside? Yes and no. Yes and no.

Because again, she's not allowed inside the legislature. So when bills and things are passed, I'm allowed inside the legislature. Well, yeah, but she can't actually make any, all she can't do is vote is what you're saying. Or speak or defend herself from not least attacks for the next six months. I mean, she's going to be sitting there taking and have to have a press. conference every day to defend everything that the NDP is throwing at her.

And it's going to be very difficult for her to do so. And so as anyone who's looking at this, there's a lot of things that the UCP have done wrong. And this stems from Kenny Stain too long. And the fact is that he's still staying too long. And he will exert his power. We know that. And we are interested to see where this is going to go because ultimately she's not the only one. I'm not saying Lila will ever win.

but Lila could lose her seat as well. Now she could sit there, but now she could be an elected official, but not have a seat in Chestermere because she's about to lose that seat. So there's a lot of weird things going on behind the scenes. Well, yeah, for example, I mean, Todd Lohen is even a member of the UCP caucus right now, and they might just not let him in if he wins. That could happen as well. So there could definitely be that.

I know from the party allowing him to run as a candidate, They've already said that he is allowed to be a part of the conservative party. He's a member within good standing. So he himself could have that and he has a seat. So it's just a matter of the caucus saying, hey, bring him in. Here's the most likely outcome, just like what happened with Jason Kenney, who didn't have a seat before he became leader of the UCP. Immediately an MLA resigned and he ran for the nomination and the seat there.

So that could also be a very quick fix. for Danielle. I think we have to be careful on painting it as if it's going to be too much of a challenge because it's definitely a hurdle it's been overcome many times. However, it is definitely a challenge that she faces that the other candidates

don't face at all. And another oddity in this weird election, this weird, like, I don't know, what has it been, guys? Eight months? Like, it just feels like this weird time. It's been 10 years, wouldn't you say? 10 years?

Yeah. No, an actual 10 years. From the time the Wild Rose lost to Redford till now, has been a decade of craziness in Alberta politics. That's fair. That's fair. So nothing about what's going on right now. Half the time, I'm laughing because if you're listening, you can't see this,

but half the time someone will say something, everybody's not in their head, like, yeah, that's 100%. And when we talk about this election, none of you are going like, oh, this is the playbook, this is exactly how it's supposed to go. There's a lot going on right now that makes zero sense. There's tons going on to make sense. Let's take this, for example. Right now the party has said that they will close nominations for CAs.

So we have, I believe, and you guys can correct me if I'm wrong on this, about 38 seats that have been confirmed of the 87, which is great. Except if the party wants to close nominations, it means that any candidate that would like to run, let's say it's a contested nomination. It might take another two months for them. So we're talking January, maybe even February before we have a nominated contestant in a CA to run against somebody who is running against an incumbent NDP, let's say in Edmonton, because there's 19 seats there like that here in Edmonton.

And we've only called for three. And I think we have one that's in the works. And that one's not even going to be allowed to be opened up until February at best, probably. And so we have some huge issues with the governance of our party. and the party's actual board and saying, why are these decisions being made? And maybe the two of you can address some of this. But, I mean, there's some crazy stuff going on behind the scenes for sure.

I don't have an answer for why it's happening, but I acknowledge that it's a real problem. And there are broken things structurally in the party. Some of the party's decisions don't make sense to me other than, insiders put their thumb on the scales for certain reasons, and now the insiders are kind of, they don't even know who to take instructions from,

and there's a bunch of thumbs looking for scales to press, even though they don't really know which scales to press. So it's a complicated mess. And in some ways, this became, this is a consequence of Jason Kenney, because the party became a cult of personality. It didn't need to be, shouldn't have become one, it shouldn't have headed in that direction, but that's what it did.

And then when the members removed Jason Kennedy by giving him a result that was so small that he couldn't survive, frankly, my guy fought tooth and nail to get Jason Kennedy to step down and create an interim. Danielle announced on the same day that, no, Jason Kenny should stay. Now she's dealing with the consequences

of supporting Jason Kennedy staying because Jason Kennedy's interviewing the race the way everybody knew he would. Um, this is, there's some really big personalities in this. Um, the personalities have in some ways overcome the structures of the party that should have been around to protect the grassroots and to create a system that's grassroots positive and that, that allows normal everyday members and and even normal everyday MLAs to have their influence. So we've got a confused bit of mess right now. And, and we've got to fix it.

And then even when you go into this actual leadership race, think right now about just a little bit less than half of the MLAs haven't endorsed anybody because they're looking at this and going, and for those of you, if you're on radio, you didn't see my eyes go super wide and my hands go all jazzy because that's what's happened. A whole bunch of normal people who normally understand politics and kind of make sense of it are trying to struggling to make sense

of the odd things that are going on. Oh, I like. Oh, go ahead. Sorry, David. Yeah, I was going to say, just even the endorsements, right? Like, I mean, there are some endorsements that are coming out there that I would never have touched with a 10-foot pole if you're trying to be the person that's standing up for freedoms and stepping away from mandates. And then you take Casey Maddo, and let's be honest, I was his former president, but you never take his, I'm sorry, I'm just out of loss for words why Daniel would even accept his endorsement. It just makes no sense to me that someone in that light who locked up pastors is now endorsing the freedom central candidate.

It just makes no sense to me. Yeah, I'm not going to defend any decisions by any candidates, but I will say that Jason Kenney raped democracy in front of all of us. And the fact that most people are unaware of that is really the problem here, right? Jason Kenney's violation of our democratic institutions have left a party that doesn't know what principle means anymore, and so it's just doing things to win. We've lost the sacredness of democracy in this province, and I use the word rape very specifically here because what people don't understand is the significance of what it means to change the day and method of a vote. I'd like both of you to just reflect on it and verbally with the listeners what it means to cancel and change the method of a vote.

Have you ever seen it before? For anything? Never. I mean, it was unfathomable to think that you have a party that people have lost trust in their leader and then right before the vote, you tell everyone, oh, don't worry, we're opening it up because we want more people to vote.

I mean, it just made no sense why anyone would do it. I understand people's frustrations, and that's why I think so many Albertans are still upset and have lost trust with the status quo. And so there are a ton of candidates. They're trying to run off of Jason Kenney's record, and I don't think that's going to help them at all. And so the three of us that are sitting here, I mean, we all support candidates that are not in that status quo. And there's a reason for that. And there's a reason why you see those numbers of those candidates slipping, whereas these candidates have an influx in people coming and saying, you know what, I've been looking at it, and maybe I didn't know who you were to begin with,

but now you're the person that I need to vote. And especially in a preferential ballot where people have, say, on multiple candidates, this is going to be very powerful because, yeah, maybe your first person doesn't get in, but they're going to still have to decide who the next premier is. Let's talk about preferential ballot. I think for myself and a lot of the listeners, do I got to vote for all seven guys? Do I vote for one? how does it work?

Let me start. Because whether or not you vote for all seven. Some of this. Depends on whether you're voting for something or you're voting against something or some mix of the two. If you're only voting for a candidate or you have a candidate in a second choice

and after that, you don't care what happens if it isn't your candidate or the second choice, then maybe you can only vote one and two. But if there's somebody on the list that you don't want to win, then you owe it to yourself to vote at least one through seven or one through six and leave that person at the back of the list because this process is more complicated than everybody thinks. So you're voting your preferences. So if you don't get your first choice, your vote moves to your second choice. And if your second choice is removed, your vote moves to

your third choice. And everybody kind of understands that. The part that, miss is if your ballot becomes what's called spent, there are no longer any choices on your ballot that are still running, your ballot no longer counts. And for every two people whose ballot no longer counts, the number of votes the first place person needs to win goes down by one. And this is where sometimes somebody will say, I can't stand candidate X. So I'm going to vote for candidates, you know, W and Z, and I'm just not going to vote other than that. And what they don't understand is if candidate X that they can't stand is in first place, and they only voted for W and Z, and if W and Z don't make that final ballot,

their vote no longer counts. But not only does their vote no longer count, the denominator that the candidate they don't like needs has gone down by one. So the number of votes that the candidate they don't like needs to win has gone down by half a vote. Let me try to explain what Vitor is saying in another angle. And then Mike, why don't you try another angle? And maybe we'll actually be able to explain this. They're all looking at me and I'm going. So the way that I think of ranked ballots is if you just think of it as like a room full of people.

And at the beginning, everyone goes to their favorite captain. So let's say we have Brian Jean, Todd Lowen, Travis Dave, Daniel Smith, Raj and Sani, all seven, and they have their little camps of people. Now, the way that the rules work is the person with the least amount of people around them, those people have to go and join other little groups, right? And so only the people of the smallest group has to do that. But then after that, you have to keep doing it until one group is 51 out of 100. in the room. So imagine it like each of the candidates is standing in the room surrounded by their supporters. And so let's say from the polling that Take Back Alberta has done it. I'll just pull that up for a moment here. Let's just say that Raj and Sonny's the first one. And let's say that she has

one person in the room. So it's her and one other person. And then Lila has 11 and Todd has 20. And so when Rajan falls off, her one person could go to Lila or could go to anyone. But nobody else's is recounted until their number one falls off. That's the way that I like to think about. But let me add one other hiccup to that. It's not just that they go to the different tables. It's that they can leave the room. Yes, yes, that's perfect. Exactly.

Yeah, exactly. And once they've left the room, you don't need 51 to win. You need a smaller amount. So I need 50. So using our numbers, we said 65,000. So let's say we need about 32,000 votes to win. So after the first ballot drops off, we're likely to think that the first three to come off are going to be the girls in Calgary. And, you know, I don't have the polling numbers in front of me, but let's just say it's 10% between them, right?

That 10% has to get spread around the other remaining candidates. So there's going to be four candidates. And not every candidate is going to get equal amount of that share. And not every candidate is going to get all of the votes for one candidate. So what's going to happen is it might be by the time we're on the fourth ballot, we might only need, let's say, 30,000 votes to now get elected. And then let's say a bunch of people drop off on the next one. And then all of a sudden, maybe we only need 27,000. So it's very important that if you really don't want someone to get elected to definitely put down your lists all the way and make sure you leave them at the bottom.

If you are so hell bent on just voting for one candidate and you're only going to put one candidate, the problem is the candidate. the problem is the candidate you don't want, you're also voting for technically by allowing their numbers to dissipate as you leave the room. That's great, yeah. Geez, I might be dense, folks. Just so I'm clear here, okay?

I rank 1 through 7. If my candidate has the lowest number of 1s, then that moves on to my 1, gets wiped off, and my 2 becomes a 1 for somebody else. Yes. Correct. Correct. But if my one stays and number 7, 6, 5, et cetera, is the first to go, it gets wiped off my ballot as well.

Yes. So the simple acknowledgement is if you're a frontrunner, there's really no real reason to put anyone else on the bottom of your ballot because there's not much to do. I mean, if you're sticking around and let's just use the two, three front runners that we're suggesting that are in there as, you know, Smith, Taves, and, and Gene, if they're the supposed front runners and they want to win, they think that they're going to win. So if you're one and two, you're going to be going head to head. It won't matter who Taves or Smith's votes go to. But it does matter a lot if Gene is in third for him to make sure that his votes go somewhere because he essentially is going to be the kingmaker and get to decide who gets to be premier. And by that I mean that his voters will be. And obviously the campaigns

can support their individuals to vote a certain way. Again, we don't tell people how to vote, but they generally do tend to vote in certain waves. And so let's say Brian's voters unanimously say we don't like Daniel Smith and go on the Taves camp. Then congratulations, Travis Taves will be your next premier. And on vice versa, if that doesn't happen and it goes the other way, then we've got Daniel Smith.

And so ultimately, it really behooves any candidates that aren't, in one and two to really think about who their number two should be on their list, because it's going to be very important to deciding who the next premier is. Well, all you guys... I'd like to say one other thing. Sure. It's being kind of written off here. If, at the very first, when the room splits, 51 are on one side and 49 or on the other,

that person wins and there's no more votes. Yep. So if somebody gets 51% of first place votes, it's over. It's over. at any point in those seven votes yeah but it's likely not going to happen majority of people in the room are with one candidate

then that candidate's one but all of that is correct the part I just want to drive home again is that you can take a model where you know say the frontrunner has only got 43% of the vote

on the first ballot and on the fourth ballot with 43% of the vote they win without having added a single extra vote just because people dropped off and their voters dropped off, that 43 out of 100 wasn't good enough to win, but 43 out of 85 now makes you win. Yeah. And let's talk about the Ed Stalmack factor, right? We've seen this happen in a number of, or used to be conservative elections in Alberta

where the person who wasn't in first or second ends up winning the premier. And that's because we have to recognize that at some point, there's an opportunity for all those bottom feeders, I'm just going to call them that, to build it all the way up and say, you know what, we're not going to vote that. And so if everyone says,

hey, Todd Lowen is the second best guy on my ballot for everyone, and all of a sudden he collects all of those, he might jump over Danielle and he might jump over Gene to be against Travis at the end. And so it does make sense that if you are in the top three, not to just leave one individual on there because you never know. It is a messy vote, but it is lots of fun for us political nerds to watch because we can strategize all day long.

So true, so true. Here's a personal question. You don't need to say who you're voting for because I don't really care. Will you put seven names down or do you put down two, four, five? What's your strategy? What do you guys do, the political junkies? Do you put seven, one, where do you go? I always fill out my ballot and I actually always start backwards.

The person I don't want to win, I put them in the lowest spot. And then I think about the remaining person I don't want to win and put them in the lowest spot. And usually it's pretty easy after that. The middle ones probably don't matter to me too much. Then I care about who I want first and who I want second. But I want to make sure that somehow I'm not accidentally voting for the person I don't want to have win. And so by just putting them in the bottom spot, I know that nothing's going to happen that my vote's going to help them carry them over the top in any way shouldn't work.

I would agree with that. Yeah, that's a good. If you really care about who wins, then you should fill out your whole ballot. Yep. You don't want to leave it to chance. I appreciate that because I've thought about that question a lot. Like what do you do? You guys are three guys who stare at this an awful lot.

So I appreciate that. You know, as time slowly ticks away here, I want to talk about the, what's the safest way to vote? to have a voting ballot. Is it mail? Is it online? Is it in person? What are your guys' thoughts? In person.

But you have to have lots of polling stations. So why, folks, do we only have five polling stations? So I have a question for you, Sean. Why did Jason Kenney rape democracy? The question I think, Sean, is why do we only have five polling stations? Because there are 40,000 votes coming out of Calgary, and there are just shy of 20,000 coming out of Edmonton. So if you've got 60,000 votes in one city where it takes you 45 minutes to drive to a polling station, you can do it. If there, what are we at, 65%? Is that what the rural vote is?

Something like that? If 65% of rural Albertans can decide who the next premier is, but now have to drive the slave lake or Tabor to go vote, it's going to be very difficult to get that 65. percent of people to stay out and vote. So you're saying it's a tactic. It's a suppression tactic. It is a voter suppression tactic. You know, I'm going to use bullshit on this again to whoever is listening because I go, you want to sow unity together in a population, when we already know we've got a

split in rural and urban, lots of people talking about it, and then you don't put a polling station, whether right nor wrong, I should point this out, you know, whether people are against mail-in or not. Right now, that is, I think. we can all agree. Nobody wants to mail their vote in. Not only is it a little bit complicated, and it's not that complicated. I'm not acting like it's calculus here or something. You know, we're sending a rocket to the moon. But, you know, you've got to sign a declaration. You got to, you got to print off your photo ID. Then you've got to fill it out properly. And if you get any

of those things wrong, it's disqualified. If it doesn't show up on time, it's disqualified. So you can, you can understand why people, such as myself, want to walk it in and go here. This is it. There's my ID. Boom, sign it off. And then you find out you have one of five locations and oh wait only four hours to get there eight to noon on October 6th like I'm sorry what on earth is that you're trying to get the the rural population and and last time I checked I live in Lloyd it's not like it's you know the boonies we have a constituency here we have MNLA's we're just as part of democracy I think is anyone else and yet boys here we sit like to me

Well, Sean, let me ask you. As the person who lives in Lloyd, do you know where you have to vote if you want to vote in person? Well, Amminton, I assume. Yeah. No. Is it going to be closest or is it based on the riding? You go to any polling station. I wasn't sure if they had said that.

They were debating on not doing that and making you drive to red here to go and vote, which would have been lots of fun. Like, I look forward to Taryn someone a new one here at some point because, you Like, I just don't get it, though, guys. Like, I'm serious, you know, like, to me, you got a very important thing. We're talking about voter turnout. Everyone's like, oh, maybe 65% as we say that. Then we get to the point, okay, what's the safest way in person? Okay, let's put five polling stations because that makes sense.

For four hours. For four hours. Only in the morning on a Thursday. Yeah, so don't you worry about your farm or your animals. Don't worry about that. And, oh, by the way, you live in, oh, yeah, Fort McMurray, and you've got to drive the slave, like, how far is that drive? 1433 kilometers.

So you have to break the speed limit to get there in time to vote if you leave at 8 a.m. Yeah. And not to mention, Vitor, it'll be October. And I love our province and our country, but who knows what type of weather we're going to be dealing with then? Like, and I love Canadians. We will drive through literally anything if we deem it important. And I tell you what, like, I'm almost wondering if it's not going to be a Wednesday night. Hey, guys, come, let's meet.

let's have a little fun at a hotel in Eminton and, you know, get together and it's going to have to be. And then get up and go vote and go home the next day. Because to me, this is like, I don't know, this is insane. Well, that's going to be my messaging. I have five big take-back Alberta events, Bonneville, Edmonton, Red Deer, Calgary, Lethbridge this month. And my message to them is going to be making a camp out. You guys were all going to go into Red Deer with $100, right? Okay.

They're trying to stop you from voting. make them feel pain for it. They're trying to restrict you. Show them that you can beat them with effort. And it's not going to work for everybody. Well, my message has always been the same. If you want change, if you're not happy with the status quo, all three of us here want change. Maybe a different candidate.

All four. All four of us want change. There we go. Perfect. I didn't want to speak for the host because, you know, the host usually tries. But yes, all four of us want change. and everyone that we've talked to says they do too. So it's going to take a little bit of extra effort

because they're trying to cheat, but we can still beat them. Well, and let's be clear. You can, if you have the concern about having to drive four hours to a voting station, you can still do a mail-in ballot. We're not discrediting anyone who wants to do it. Just make sure you do it correctly. That's the biggest thing.

So don't spoil your ballot. And if you're concerned about spoiling that ballot, maybe talk to the candidate or the campaign that you're working with to have them help you out to make sure that it's done correctly. Because the worst thing would be is that you put all that effort in. You think you voted. But little do we know, you actually didn't vote because you forgot to put your ID in it. Yeah, well, let's clear up a couple things. I agree with you, Mike.

As I tirade here a little bit on voting spots and everything else, I just go back to what's the most secure in person. I like in person in today's day and age and some of the things that have been going on. I think a lot of the world right or wrong is skeptical of mailing, right? I just think they are. But here's some dates for you, okay? So if you're listening to this and you bought a UCP membership before August 12th or on August 12th or earlier, you're going to have a mail-in ballot coming to you. So they were sent on September 2nd, and if you don't see one in the mail by September 14th,

that's when you've got to start being worried. It has to be into them by October 3rd to be consistent. considered valid and in it there's steps on the UCP website that basically say you have to sign a declaration you have to print your photo ID off and then you have to fill it out properly put it all in an envelope sign and seal in a way it goes so it's not like you can't I agree with you I just look at it and go we all feel way more comfortable if we could drive half an hour heck an hour in Canada and go put it in person show your ID and away you go right I get the rest it. One of the things that I think David brought up at the start, what I'm hearing is, is different candidates are going to do a tour of Ottawa, of Alberta, kind of doing, you give us

your vote, sign and seal it, we'll make sure it gets delivered. I don't know how that's going to go, but I understand the thought process behind it, considering they're trying to make sure people fill it out and get it there on time. As long as we don't have a mule issue, we'll be fine. Yeah, that's got to be something that we should mention before we go into those details, which is there's got to be a lot of eyes on this and there's got to be. So if you even can think of a way that Jason Kenney and his cronies could cheat on this, ring it up, email the party, harass them, say, I don't like the rules in this way. There are lawyers in the party.

Read the rules and say, I think these are ways that can be cheated. Like, shine light on this situation. This is not some great, dark, nefarious group of geniuses. Look, they're not that bright. Like, they can be beat. But we need strength in numbers, guys. Strength in numbers. With enough people paying attention to this, we can make sure it's a fair process.

If we get a fair process, we might get a little bit more trust in our leaders. And if we get a little bit more trust, maybe we can rebuild this and stop the socialists from destroying the place we love. Any final thoughts, fellas, from you guys? I want to make sure we have you out on time, but I appreciate you doing the first roundtable. Hopefully we don't get booted for this, and if we do, it wouldn't be anything new from where I'm sitting. But regardless, I appreciate you guys doing this. Is there any final thoughts or any thoughts for any of the members of people voting that you want to make sure they know as the date closes in?

Because, I mean, we're under a month now and we're going to see where it goes. You're actually bringing up an important point about one of the unfairnesses of a mail-in ballot. Literally, people have to mail in their ballots, and if they're in rural parts of Alberta, they probably should mail them in earlier rather than later, which means that they have to make their decisions with less information than somebody who can go into Edmonton or Calgary on the last day in vote. And I live in terror of us getting something like the situation that happened in Calgary. with a city councilor where, you know, he won because of the early votes, because there were things

that got announced in the last few days that basically wiped out his ability to win the election with anybody who was voting on Election Day. You know, this process, this very, very long voting process is going to, it makes it harder. People, people outside the two big cities have to vote early and just trust that things won't evolve and it won't change their methods. So I'm, you know, I'm not telling everybody. You don't have to rush and put your ballot in the very first day. You still have time. Your ballot's got to get to Calgary now.

But pay attention. There's still going to be a fair amount of politics in the next week and a half, two weeks. Unless you're absolutely rock solid on how you're voting, watch for a few more days before you cast your ballot because I think there's value in trying to vote with as much information as possible. I think in the long run, that's probably a good thing for the party. good thing for democracy. Especially if you're ranking seven people.

Yeah. But this wouldn't have been the process I would have chosen for doing what we did. Well, I appreciate you guys coming on and doing this with me. Thanks again, fellas. I got one last thing I'd like to say. Just from the perspective. Squeezing in under the buzzer. Just speaking from their perspective of Take Back, Alberta, I just encourage every single person to please do your civic responsibility.

and put the extra effort in like people like mike vitor and i were used to you not putting in the effort and that's why we're like oh this needs to be easier they shouldn't have to travel we want to make it as easy as possible and that's all true but we've just shown you that they're making it hard for you to vote i think you should give them a big middle finger and say i don't care that you're making it hard i'm going to do this and if that means taking a day if you can if it means whatever you need to do make sure that vote gets cast Just look at it like it's a night out, you know, like take a day off work, drive up, have a nice supper, a couple of sips of something and go to bed early, late, whatever you want,

wake up, go cast a ballot and carry on. To me, we spend, all of us, we'll spend money on interesting things. And whether that's, you know, a ticket going to the oiler game or whatever your fancy is, we'll put her money where we want to go. And so for this one, I'm hoping all of you are proven wrong with your 65% voter turnout. I hope it's higher than that. That's my hope. But we'll see.

Well, and I think there's one other thing that we're missing here is after the eighth, we're going to have a new premier. And we all have to get on board because we've got nine months, less than nine months now. It'll be eight months that we've got to prepare ourselves for another election. And so don't take your tools or your toys and go play with somebody else just because you're candidate doesn't get in. I think there's a lot of people that are going to be frustrated with the outcome of this election because they're going to be voting for some person and they're not going to get in, but it doesn't mean that the conservative movement has to be that.

Not quite one of seven. Only one of seven can win, right? Yeah, that's right. That's right. And at the end of the day, they have to be a team. That's what we said on the stage in Vermillion, right? One of your wins, but then you've got to move on, you know, your team and you've got to figure this out because that incomes Rachel Notley. And it's saying that, if Rachel Notley is listening, or team, I would love nothing more than to hear what the NDP have to say. Because to me, one of the problems we have in democracy right now is we don't listen to anyone. And it would be very interesting to have the premier of Alberta and Rachel Nottley sit down and have a discussion and let the people of Alberta hear it. Wouldn't that be something wild to do?

Well, I think you've just laid down the gauntlet. So I'm looking forward to hearing the conversations that you're about to start. Notley's actually willing to talk to Albertans are only the ones that agree with her. Well, I, listen, I think Rachel Notley at some point, if she's going to win, has to talk to people. It's just whether she feels like she's going to get a fair shake. And I can safely say, I'm going to give anyone who comes on here a fair shake. I believe that. I believe that.

Thanks for having us, Sean. I really appreciate you taking the time to have us on, too. Yeah, well, I appreciate you boys hopping on and exploring an idea with me. It's help. It's at least help me in the end. hour figure out a few different things as the election comes closer and as the mail-in ballots are going to be getting in the mailboxes and everything else. I hope it's helped some of the 60,000 or the 120,000, whether they knew some of these things or not. Either way, fellas, appreciate

you hopping on for the roundtable and we'll see you on the other side. Sounds good. Thank you so much, thank you.