My endorsements for council were published this weekend, and many people noticed that I recommended two candidates for ward Ipiihkoohkanipiaohtsi.

This was not a mistake, and yes, I know you can only vote for one person!

Endorsing someone in this ward is something that I've struggled with for months. Both Jon and Funke are great candidates, for different reasons. If they were running in different wards, I'd be happy to have them both on the team.

And, in this ward, the incumbent is the worst we've seen in a generation.

In a situation like this, our collective goal should be to avoid a split vote, causing the incumbent to win.

The easiest way to avoid this is to simply vote, en-masse, for the candidate with a higher level of public support, however in watching the race, doing some rudimentary sign counts in the ward and talking with voters in the ward, it is not clear to me that one is substantially ahead of the other.

Another way to avoid this is to have one candidate drop out and endorse the other. I spoke with both candidates about this, and neither intended to, and now that we're past the Sept 22 nomination day, the ballot has been finalized and such a thing isn't possible anymore.

But there is a third way to avoid a split vote, and that is simply to have both candidates earn a higher vote total than the incumbent. Certainly the candidates can "split" votes, but as long as one of them (or both) earn more votes than the incumbent, we're off to the races.

In my view, this is going to be a low turnout election. The mayor's race is not very exciting, and the driving non-incumbent message in most wards tends to be one of exasperation with the "state of Edmonton". This kind of negative, uninspired campaigning tends to depress turnout. Municipal elections usually land at around 32-35% turnout already, and low turnout favours incumbents which is one reason incumbents historically perform so well municipally.

To endorse one candidate over the other here would be to cause consternation in approximately half of the voters we need to unseat this incumbent. It would make this recommendation controversial in the ward, it would reduce cohesiveness and it would cause substantial arguing and mud-flinging. All of these things have negativity which depresses turnout.

My goal here is simple: I want to unseat the incumbent with a qualified candidate that has Edmonton's best interests at heart. In speaking with both of them, I believe both Funke and Jon meet those criteria. I want my endorsements to energize their teams and encourage them to work harder.

My endorsement is that both of them should earn more votes than Jennifer Rice.

And to whomever earns more votes than the other, I'll wish congratulations on earning their seat.