Social Media & Local Election coverage

This past Thursday - both Williams Lake City Councillors Laurie Walters and Surinderpal Rathor stated that they would seek re-election.  In Councillor Rathor's case - if re-elected, he would begin his 7th consecutive term and in Councillor Walters' case - if re-elected, she would begin her 2nd term.  See the Tribune article on this here and see a story on this as well from the Rush here

However, early Thursday morning on Twitter, Greg Fry of the Rush "tweeted" the following:


Williams Lake city councillors Surinderpal Rathor and Laurie Walters seeking re-election.....interesting how Walters snubbed the rush.


About 48 mins later, he then "tweeted" the following:


Ok...I partially take back the snub comment re: Laurie Walters...she just called... though Wed. would have been better.

Given Councillor Walters' goal to be involved with social media for this election, this was not the kind of Twitter-related coverage her campaign team likely wanted

In fact - it is not the first time an elected official has gotten into hot water, via Twitter.  Vancouver City Councillors Andrea Reimer and Heather Deal both were forced into apologizing after making questionable comments on their Twitter accounts.

Just another reminder that campaign teams must be careful when running their election machines, lest media people get onto their Twitter account(s) and become frustrated...

It will be interesting to see and follow how much social media (Facebook, Twitter and blogs) will play, either, a direct or indirect role, as it relates to local elections in the Cariboo-Chilcotin.

Stay tuned here as I'll be covering, as best I can, all of the local election races for all of the municipal councils, Cariboo Regional District and both School Districts #27 and #28

SBF