This article focuses on the Edmonton part of “Edmonton Oilers Hockey Blog” that you see in the website header. It’s voting day for Edmonton City Council and if you live in the City of Champions, or any of the wonderful surrounding municipalities, it’s time you do your duty and get out there and vote today.

You might be asking yourself “hey I agree with that heading. Why in the hell should I vote?” Vote because the percentage of us who do is relatively small yet the percentage of us who bitch and moan about Edmonton is nearly 100%. Vote because giving a damn about the city is an important part of our duty as Edmontonians.

If you don’t look at the candidates and decide who is the best solution to whatever problems you find most important you can’t complain the rest of the four year term in our books. You did vote? Then complain away you whiny SOB – you have earned the right.

The Edmonton Arena was the biggest political topic in Edmonton in the past 25 years and that’s a real shame. It’s also a shame that we won’t now collectively get behind a new idea that will cause as passionate a debate as to how to continue to develop Edmonton. Vote because you want to see new ideas brought forth to make our City even better in the coming years.

Mayor McCheese was a fictional character based on H.R. Pufnstuf, invented by the McDonalds Corporation designed to entice children into their stores. You can write him in on the ballot if you choose, but as a man with a cheeseburger for a head he won’t be much use at City Council meetings.

Like so many of us, we don’t pretend to understand all of the issues surrounding this election nor do we have a total understanding of the different candidate platforms. But that doesn’t mean we won’t make a gut decision and vote.

We are going to vote for Don Iveson for whatever that is worth. We are good friends with many of his like minded campaign team – including the esteemed @bingofuel co-founder of the Nation Network who then took a bag of cash and ran.

We have had the good fortune of meeting Don a couple of times and found we agreed on many issues and most importantly we share a passion for the City. We haven’t always agreed with him on every issue but at the end of the day he is far and away the best candidate of the two front runners in our book.

Finally it would be sick to have a man younger than Ryan Smyth elected Mayor of Edmonton. The man is only 34 years old for heavens sakes. How cool is that?

No matter if you think we are right, wrong or completely mentally incompetent if you live in Edmonton please go vote today.