The award-winning journalist and politician Jo-Ann Roberts discusses her new book Storm the Ballot Box: An Insider’s Guide to a Voting Revolution (Nimbus Publishing, 2025), with Joseph Planta.
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Storm the Ballot Box: An Insider’s Guide to a Voting Revolution by Jo-Ann Roberts (Nimbus Publishing, 2025).
Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: Storm the Ballot Box [1] |
Text of the introduction by Joseph Planta:
I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, British Columbia, at TheCommentary.ca.
Jo-Ann Roberts joins me now. She’s written a new book that’s especially timely Storm the Ballot Box: An Insider’s Guide to a Voting Revolution. It’s an engaging book that offers solutions to combat the apathy, ignorance and frustration a lot of citizens feel about democracy itself. And it’s written with the experience of a forty-year reporter who left journalism to run for political office. She was a candidate in the 2015 federal election in Victoria, BC, running for the Green Party, and then in the elections of 2019 and 2021 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She shares her experiences as a candidate in those elections, showing the reader what it’s like financially personally, but more importantly for the campaign. She takes aim in the book at strategic voting. It seems to be what most of the parties are urging voters to do in this election. Jo-Ann’s view is that voters should vote for who they think would best represent them, rather than against a candidate or a party or a particular leader. We’ll talk about fixed election dates, as well as polling and misinformation emanating from political parties. There’s a lot in the book that’s worthwhile to consider, and doable. Jo-Ann Roberts is an award-winning journalist, who spent twenty years as a CBC Radio host. She is the former interim leader of the Green Party of Canada, and in sum was a candidate in four elections. She has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of King’s College. This new book is from Nimbus Publishing. We spoke yesterday afternoon, with Jo-Ann joining me from Halifax. Please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program, Jo-Ann Roberts; Jo-Ann, good afternoon.
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