vote with rocks! (errr – at the ballot box?)

well, it seems i may have been wrong in my prediction there would not be an election this summer – the fallacy of course being my optimistic view that no politician would be so disrespectful of the voting public as to call an election for mid-summer. ha! was i ever wrong. but we shall have to wait unto the 19th to see whether parliament is dissolved or not, and then it is likely the canadian public will be dragged (kicking and screaming) into another election campaign. it’s all very unreasonable, and likely to produce another minority government that produces another minority government that produces another minority government – and so on. this is how little the public trusts either dominant political party: we are terrified of having either get a majority even if that makes the system unworkable, and so condemned to an infinite loop of failed budget bills and intercine bickering.

i’m pretty sure my outrage due to the federal situation has not been exhausted yet and won’t be until sometime this summer. the lack of democracy! the cost! the idiocy! the failed political reforms! it’s all too much to bear.

fortunately the provincial situation will be resolved much sooner, and with a clear majority for one of the two contending parties (notwithstanding some marginal possibility for a minority government if the greens rally at the nth hour). in my riding i am betting on the ndp candidate nicholas simons against adrianne carr – simons apparently polled at the top of each station on the sunshine coast when he ran for the ndp federally last summer, and the liberals don’t appear to be going so strong on the sunshine coast this time around – so i think there’s a good chance the seat will revert back to the ndp. it’s hard to say though, and definitely one of the more interesting races going at the moment.

my current plan is to spend election night at the WISE watching the results come in with other friends and allies (as per tradition) – but if my father is still on the coast then i won’t be doing that (he’s arriving today). i have to somehow co-ordinate voting and commuting, which may mean advance polling tomorrow or taking the legally mandated four-hours off work to vote so i can go to the polls tuesday morning. i am actually looking forward to election night this time around, curious more than anything.

funny – how that training is ingrained – i don’t believe in the bourgeois democracy in which we live, i often rail about the lack of true representation and local power at the provincial and federal levels – and yet i keep voting, election after election. no matter how fed up i am. no matter how little faith or trust i have in the system. only one time have i failed to vote in a provincial election (when the ndp did so many awful things i decided to vote for no one) and i have never failed to vote in a federal election. i’m not sure why that is, why i keep going out as if it matters, why i keep paying attention to the antics of the elites who surely don’t share any interests of mine (as they have proven over and over again).

during the american presidental election, my friend laughing meme posted a link to a new yorker article on how people choose their leaders which i found fascinating at the time. i have re-located the link to post here, because even though it refers to the us political system, i’m pretty sure that this type of thinking dominates most canadian elections too. i find it pretty frightening that such a high percentage of people seem to choose their leaders based on highly irrational ideas rather than a cohesive vision for what they want society to be. just something to think about in the endless election treadmill we seem to be stuck on at the moment

elections bc yesterday said that blogs endorsing a political candidate were to be considered “election advertising” and thus must be registered with elections bc. am i breaking the law now to say i am voting ndp without registering with elections bc? only time will tell.

in the meantime i say: a vote with a slingshot is worth two ballots in the box. time to start collecting rocks.