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Why Penticton Together?
Local politics comes with a lot of terms nobody bothers to explain, "elector organization" being a great example. So before we ask for your vote, here's the plain-language version of what we actually are, what it means when we back a candidate, and what happens once someone we've endorsed is sitting at the council table.
What's an elector organization?
In BC, a group of residents can register as an "elector organization" or an EO which lets them officially endorse candidates and run as a coordinated team instead of a bunch of strangers who happen to be on the same ballot. Same election finance rules as anyone else. Same public disclosure requirements. Same accountability.
Penticton Together is registered this way, as PENTICTON TOGETHER ELECTORS ASSOCIATION. It's what lets us back a slate instead of four people separately knocking on the same doors, splitting the same volunteers, and figuring out the same logistics from scratch. We'd rather pool that energy.
Okay, so what does "endorsed" actually mean?
Typically, it means an organization has done the legwork —talked to a candidate, checked that their priorities line up with what its members care about — and decided it's willing to put its name behind them. The group already exists; the candidate comes to it.
That's how it usually goes. It's not quite how it went for us.
This is our first year. Penticton Together and these candidates came together at the same time. Nobody applied to an organization that was already up and running, because there wasn't one yet. Instead, there was a group of people who wanted something different for this city, and the candidates were part of building it from the start.
That didn't mean skipping the work. We talked through priorities, checked that we were actually aligned on what matters, and made a deliberate choice to put our name behind them. And in return, they're plugged into something bigger than any one campaign — volunteers, resources, and support pooled together by everyone who showed up to help build this, not inherited from some machine that existed before any of us did.
What it doesn't mean: we don't hand anyone a script. Endorsement isn't a leash. Every candidate we back still has their own positions, their own voice, and their own judgment. Our job is to back people we trust to use it well — not to make the decisions for them.
And once someone's elected, then what?
They show up to council and do the job, same as anyone else on that council. There's no party whip in municipal politics, and nobody's phone buzzes with instructions on how to vote. That's true for every councillor in Canada, not just ours, but it's worth saying out loud because a lot of people assume otherwise.
What does change is who they're accountable to. An endorsed councillor stays in touch with the movement that helped get them there.Not because they owe us their vote, but because staying connected to the people who organized for them is just... the right way to do this. We're not going anywhere after October, and neither is the conversation.
That's really the whole idea: politics doesn't have to be a black box you only think about once every four years. We're trying to make it a little more legible, and a little more like something you're actually part of.