City of Calgary to take photos and video and post web profiles of all municipal election candidates

The City of Calgary plansto shoot photos and videos and post online profiles of all candidates in this October's municipal election, in a bid to level the playing field and to boost voter turnout.

City of Calgary videographers and photographers are in the process of collecting two-minute, unedited platform videos as well as accompanying photographs to create profiles of the roughly 100 candidates running for election on Oct. 16.

The cost of creating the profiles willbe covered entirely by the city's elections budget. The pilot project is budgetedfor$13,000, says Paul Denys, the chief returning officer.

"In past elections we received a fair number of phone calls from individuals who had a hard time tracking down information about their candidates," Denys told CBC News.

"Because of that frustration, many of them chose not to participate, or they don't participate in an informed fashion."

Level playing field

Since all candidates will have the same length of video and quality of images,some new candidates are excited about a more level playing fieldwith their incumbent competition.

"The more that we can have opportunities and venues where money is not the deciding factor, where people aren't necessarily distracted by video quality ... I think we need to see more of it quite frankly," said Greg Miller, running in Ward 4 against incumbent Sean Chu.

Ward 8 incumbent Evan Woolley said the competition is welcome.

"Particularly at the municipal level we've seen huge increases in spending," he said.

"As a part of democracy, we want to have some equality of opportunity for people who are challenging incumbents or taking on other challengers,the opportunity to have a fair shake."

Drive-thru voting

The website is intended to increase voter turnout, which dropped to39 per cent in the 2013 municipal election, and is just one ofseveral methods being pursued by Elections Calgary.

Other effortsincludefree transit on election day as well as drive-thruvoter booths.

Theefforts are the result of a motion put forward this past spring by Woolley.

"If we don't work to continuously improve our democracy, what's the point of us being here," he said.

The profile website will go live with the videos and more information on all candidates on September19.In the meantime, more information on the election and the modified electoral boundaries can be found at calgary.ca/election.

• MORE CALGARY NEWS |Ezra Levant's 'damage control' not enough for UCP leadership hopeful taking on The Rebel
• MORE CALGARY NEWS |'More money won't fix the problem': Brian Jean unveils plan to overhaul Alberta's health-care system