(JENNA WHEELER / iNFOnews.ca) May 23, 2021 - 11:00 AM It's the long weekend in May and we're still in the middle of a pandemic so a federal election and how local candidates are chosen likely isn't on the radar for most people. But there’s a mostly secretive process going on in the background that will determine who is going to speak for the residents of the five Thompson and Okanagan ridings in the region in the next federal parliament and most voters will have no part in that process. Constituents can only vote for the candidate the party has chosen. Secretive is the appropriate word because efforts by iNFOnews.ca to find out how the nomination process is running, deadlines for signing up new members and election times have come up mostly with no responses from the three major political parties or formulaic emails such as this one: “While we don’t comment on the specifics of individual nominations, we’re ready to elect even more talented, diverse, and hardworking community leaders as part of our Liberal team, including in