The Toronto Sun Knows How To Have Fun – Impeach Miller Petition Hits 1401 signatures
I received an email that included a link to a petition to impeach David Miller (before you pull out the City of Toronto Act or the Municipal Elections Act – there is no re-call provision) that the Mayor himself apparently attempted to be-little in Council for having just 24 signatures. While I could not find Miller’s comment on it specifically and can’t verify that part to be accurate at this point, I did find a Toronto Sun article on the petition. The Toronto Sun very cleverly used the issue of a 24 signature petition to get some shots in on the Mayor – something the Toronto Sun has made a hobby of in many ways. In doing so, they garnered attention for the petition, and since writing about it on March 10th (when it had 24 signatures) by March 12th at press time it had 785 signatures. At 11:45pm on March 17th it had 1401 signatures on the nose.
When it was a 24 person effort the Mayor’s Deputy Communications Director “described the online petition and other similar groups on Facebook as an example of democracy at work.” Online petition calls for mayor’s ouster – Toronto Sun, March 10th 2009 I honestly wonder what the Mayor’s office thinks about a petition with 1401 signatures and at what point an online petition like this has the potential to impact the Mayor’s political agenda and questions like will he run in 2010.
Take a look at the wording of the petition, and click on the link to view the comments folks have been leaving when they sign.
“To: Mayor David Miller & Toronto City Council
It is time to leave office as Mayor; your services are no longer required.
The people of Toronto are taking a stand to Mayor David Miller’s endless abuse of OUR hard earned money. Giving the city of Toronto employees a 2% raise increase during a global recession is absurd! Raising property taxes and your reckless spending will no longer be tolerated.
It’s time that Mayor David Miller and his gang of thieves are thrown out of office. Mayor David Miller and the Toronto City council are out of touch with our community and our city.
We are Torontonians who love our city. We will ensure that a responsible leader is put in office, one who is in touch with our city, our province, and our country.
Impeach Mayor David Miller from office now!
Sincerely,
The link to the petition itself is here: IMPEACH TORONTO MAYOR DAVID MILLER NOW!
My primary interest in this effort is watching the relationship between online activism and new media evolve with traditional political structures and traditional media. It’s a really dry topic if you’re not into that stuff, but if you are like me, stuff like this is fascinating.
In many ways something like this can be easily dismissed (as many opposition groups are by government) because the powers that be will look at something like this and say “It’s 1400 people. The Mayor had 333 000 votes in the last election.” I guess for me though, when you consider how few people sign petitions, I begin to wonder if the signatures of 1400 possibly represent the making of a political force, something that could become a legitimate problem by November 2010.
To the Mayor’s credit though, he has more friends on Twitter than this petition has signatures.
One thing is for sure, the impact social networking tools and the internet will continue to have on politics moving forward is immense. I suspect especially at the operation level of campaigns, online tools are going to continue to have a major influence on how we do our politics. For me at least, the use of the internet as a political tool is a very neat thing to watch unfold. In many ways, I think this petition demonstrates how much less control our politicians have over the system compared to the pre-internet days.
Just imagine for a moment what happens if each of these 1400 people (whose email address the petition administrator is likely storing) makes 100 phone calls during the 2010 election, donates 100 bucks or drops 100 flyers. No one can say they will, or that they will be coordinated in any political effort, but the potential is there, and sure is interesting to watch.
Comments have been turned off after this post became the target for pornographic and pharmaceutical spam. Should you wish to comment – email me at john.laforet@laforet.ca and I will manually post it.
Tags: Impeach David Miller Petition, Political Impact of Online Tools, Toronto Sun
