Connecting voters with candidates

Michael Murphy, director of the Centre for International and Defence Policy and former Buchanan Postdoctoral Fellow in Canadian Democracy, and Jonathan Rose, a professor of Political Science and former department head have created Better Debates Kingston: A Guide to Help Meet Voters' Needs.

The guide, which was designed around the unique challenges of municipal elections, focuses on redesigning the structure of all candidate meetings to provide voters with critical information and help them distinguish between candidates. It connects the goals of a debate to a ready-to-use framework.

"Despite municipal elections representing the most local form of democracy, this level of government unfortunately sees a low level of engagement compared to federal or provincial elections," Dr. Murphy says when asked about why they created the guide. "Especially in small- to medium-size cities, part of the challenge is in terms of information accessibility. We just don't have the same level of local news coverage that communities used to enjoy, and independent campaigns don't have access to the communication resources that political parties do at other levels. In the municipal context, one of the main opportunities for voters to receive information about their options is through the candidate debates. We wondered if a new model of debates that matches the information needs of voters might help voters to bridge the information gap."

Drawing on lessons learned from the review of federal election debates, the new guide offers guidance for hosting debates that meet voters’ information needs. This framework helps achieve its key information objectives through three key elements:

• Crowdsourcing residents’ concerns
• Refining the question set
• Introducing an “information and contrast” model

"I have had several interesting exchanges with other folks who care deeply about the state of local democracy, and the most encouraging part of these conversations has been learning more about what inspires people to get involved in strengthening democracy," says Dr. Murphy. "There are sometimes parts of the guide with which they disagree, but the more important part is that we're sparking a conversation about how tinkering with formats and processes can help connect voters with information about the choices in front of them."

The Better Debates Kingston guide is free to download from the School of Policy Studies website.