In the Blog
what’s your strategy?
Voting season always brings up all sorts of civic-philosophical issues for me. Like, I have trouble believing in the potency of my single vote, and yet that’s the entire principle of a democratic electoral system, duh. And should I vote for the issues I care about, or against the issues I hate? Or, like my avowedly socialist housemate, I could abstain from the whole thing, or spoil my ballot as a statement against the powers that be, blah blah blah - but is anyone listening? (I probably won’t do either of those last two, but they are food for thought.)
In any case, it seems like a near-universal truth that, with the exception of a few optimistic enthusiasts, Canadians don’t vote for the party we care about. Rather, we vote for one despicable dirtbag in order to keep another despicable dirtbag out of office. Depressing as strategic voting is, it’s often necessary, and now there’s even a website that will tell you how to vote in order to prevent a Harper majority. All you do is enter your postal code and it’ll give you a breakdown of your riding and a recommended candidate. Besides being useful if you’re into that sort of thing, it’s kind of an interesting experiment in statistical data dealing with large populations, and, like, the power of the internet, man.
N.B. - According to the website, my riding is apparently guaranteed to go NDP, so I’ve been instructed to “vote with my heart”. Sweet, count one ballot for the Marxist Feminist Jazz Dancing Karaoke Party.
