Strategic Voting

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For those of you worried about Harper winning a majority gov't, here is a website to help make your vote count.

In the 12 federal elections held in the last 40 years, 8 have resulted in majority governments, even though the winning party won a majority of votes only once, in 1984.

And now we have to resort to stategic voting in the hope to get our true voices heard. WTF

I agree with Zach de la Rocha: "Freedom? Yeah, right."

having said that, ya gotta make do with what ya got, so I'm ready to vote swap to make sure we get as many green MPs as possible.

I'm ready to use the politicians as kindling to light the pile of economists that will burn the CEOs
at the stake. People are going down hard because of all three groups' failure to do their jobs with
any semblance of integrity or concern for anything other than their jobs and cozy connections and
the worst they'll suffer is having to cut back to only a couple of vacation homes.

I'm not a stupid person... or at least I'd like to think so (supported by various testing tools)... but I find that website very confusing and not seemingly clear in its message.

I spent 10 minutes (at least) perusing and reading, and it's still not clear what I'm supposed to do with it.

Time's up... Next!

From what I gathered, it's another Anything But Conservative group. This one seems to be one of the bigger ones out there. All I really got out of it was to put my postal code in to see who to vote for to have the best chance of electing a non-Conservative MP. It gives predictions on who will win your riding based on recent polls and/or anecdotal evidence.

See the 'About This Project' at the very top of the site:

" was designed by Canadians who believe ... we must start to reduce our fossil fuel pollution now to save the planet from dangerous climate change. ... ... Harper and the Conservative Party are simply not in step with what scientists say is needed, with Canadians' concerns, and with economic benefits of dealing with climate change. All the other major Parties have programs that seriously address our critical climate concerns and are talking about them in this election. If those of us who care about the environment don’t work together across party lines, the pro-environment vote will be split as it was in the last election and Harper will be re-elected. ... We are the majority. But our electoral system hasn’t kept up with Canada’s changing political landscape."

Yeah Craig, that was easy to find, but I found it to be a lot of ramble without any direction on what to DO with it. All why and no what.

IN: thanks for that, it's clear now what they want people to do with the site and it's tools. If only they had said it as clearly... or at all.

"All the other major Parties have programs that seriously address our critical climate concerns"

That is a joke. 12 Years of Liberals and all we got was what you always get from the sitting government. "We will reduce our CO2 emissions in by 20% of 1990 levels be 2020". And then nothing else.

Stop with the reduction targets, start with the tough love. Add 50 cents/liter to gas taxes, put that into transit and reduce fares to $1. Ban the sales of over sized vehicles (Ram 2500, Ford F250) to people who don't have a business license. Fund small Canadian Car producers who have created 0 emission cars rather then giving tax breaks to GM to help lower fuel efficency by 0.02%. Ban the sale of bottled water. Give tax rebates to people who bike to work. Do SOMETHING with an impact, rather than keep debating paper vs plastic.

Also, if you don't like the system we have, the BC Government is at least trying to suggest a differnent system that allows you to vote for popular, local, independant candidates without feeling like you are wasting your vote(s). Next time we have a choice there, support STV!


What M2C said... plus:

Fuck the gov't. Stop waiting for them to lead the way. Gov'ts are reactive by nature. It's a
goddamn popularity contest and nothing more. You might just as well expect Miss America to
quote "The Beauty Myth" during the talent portion of the pagaent. Our entire economy is
based upon consumer demand, so stop demanding convenience and comfort and start
delivering some semblance of civilization to your children, because the way we're headed, The
Road Warrior is going to look like a how-to educational film within a century. We're going to
use the last of our oil fighting over the last of our water.

Stop expecting that this is going to be painless., It's not. Your non-negotiable way of life is
over. Get used to it. Educate yourself. Find out just what impact that plane trip to somewhere
sunny in winter really has, start thinking about what things will be like in 500 years, not 50.
Don't be a politician, paying lip service to the issues and doing nothing. Show some spine and
some consideration for the billions of people on the planet for whom the DTES would be like
Club Med.

Those are the cold hard facts people. You can call me Chicken Little, but that's a sure sign
you don't know WTF is really going on. Crack a history book. This same shit, different century
always ends the same way, unless we are going to take things into our own hands on a
personal level and make a lot of sacrifices right now.

Oh m2c, so beautifully put!

ha ha

Phrase of the Day:

"Electile Dysfunction"
The inability to be aroused by the choices of any of the political candidates...

good one..

Don't forget to vote today

Forget strategic voting - how about voting, period!?

"An estimated 59.1 per cent of Canadians cast votes in Tuesday's general election — a figure that appears to be a record low in the history of Confederation."

This makes Mom so angry.

Electoral. Reform. Needed.

I agree that some sort of electoral reform is needed. First, to address the facts that the
conservatives got 46% of the seats with 36% of the vote and that 7% of voters asked for GReen
and got 0 seats while 10% of the voters asked for BQ and got 16% of the seats. Second, if
possible, to address the likelihood of minority governments, which can be nearly useless.

What other options are there?

And while I'm here, shame on the 40% who couldn't be bothered to vote. If only there were a
way to ensure that they can't complain about the government until after they vote in the next

Hey Gin-Boh, methinks your two goals are in conflict.

One advantage of our current first-past-the-post system is that it's more likely to generate majority governments, which are historically more stable, and allow more big things to 'get done', even if some part of the population doesn't like what those things might be.

Proportional rep systems, by contrast, will be much more likely to generate minority governments (almost guaranteed, I'd say), where a lot more time is spent negotiating, forming and breaking coalitions, etc. (not necessarily leading to the best outcomes due to politics), and big stuff is less likely to get done (I doubt NAFTA woulda been possible, and a Green Shift might be unlikely, too).

So which do we want: stable majorities (with uneven representation) or less-stable minorities (with more even representation)?

I agree that everyone should vote, but don't really feel much suprise that nearly half didn't.
Let's face it... is there any real difference between the three majors? They all say they're
looking out for the little guy... and then give money to the big guys. Further, there's a total
disconnect between labels and reality. The Conservatives aren't conservative. The Liberals
aren't liberal, and the NDP, well, they're not New and aren't throwing any parties.

Seriously however, if all three major leaders are saying everyone should vote for them, then
how can I expect any of them to accurately reflect my p.o.v. in Parliament? To use Harper as
an example, if he says I should vote for him... and I know his platform doesn't address my
issues, then he's an idiot, and worse, is treating me like one too. Just for once I'd like to hear
a candidate say, "This is what I stand for, and if you don't agree, vote for the other guy/gal."

They all assume it's a one size fits all world and nothing could be further from the truth. They
need to STFU and GBTW, which in a democracy means representing the views of the majority
while protecting the rights of the minorities... and not mortgaging the future so badly that our
grandchildren will suffer the consequences. I didn't see or hear anything from any leader
during the past few weeks that made me confident they could put their ego aside and get
down to actually working together to get shit done in a respectful, consensus-based manner.
Buncha wankers. Without exaggeration, I honestly believe the pre-schoolers I've seen in the
past few years are better equipped to cooperate towards mutually beneficial goals. How sad is

Although I would like to see certain reforms in the electoral system, I do think that what we've got is pretty good. Now, how you regard the status quo, however, depends on how you weight many different philosophies and objectives of government.

Should the distribution of seats exactly reflect the popular vote? I think the two measures should be tolerably close, but strictly, I don't think they should need to match. I do feel bad for the Green party, because they did earn a significant share of the popular vote without landing a single seat, but the point is that they only manage to sway a highly dispersed fraction of voters.

Strictly popular representation would fail to capture geographical trends and perspectives. Realistically, it gives all the voice to the most populated regions: urbanized areas. Is that fair? More importantly, is that wise? If a few small ridings are concentrated enough in their desire to elect an independent or a fringe party, well, maybe that deserves disproportionate representation. Under popular representation, it would be utterly implausible to seat an independent candidate. Maybe a good electoral system should weight a candidate's ability to win over a whole community. Maybe it's important to disproportionately recognize that a group of people in a certain area feels disproportionately strongly about something or someone.

In short, there is something to be said for measuring and weighting geographical concentration, which our system recognizes. It is not a perfect system, but I would like to submit one of its few advantages for thought.

Overall I like the idea of a Minority more than a Majority as the system of Government in Canada gives almost Dictitorial power to the PM. With the current system, you either line up with your party or you are done, and First Past the Post makes it all but impossible for smaller or new parties to emerge, and Independants are hard to come by, even if we did get 2 this time around.

Minorities are good because the party in "charge" has to at least listen to the opposition and can't get too out of wack. More than 50% of the voters supported the Conservitives and Liberals and if they work together some (ok, not much, but more than in a Majority) then then voters are better served.

The STV process will lend to Minoritiy Governments, but also to popular local candidates with no party affiliation, or popular local candidates with a party affiliation that the party can't just turf because if they do they will lose a seat. A. Carr may well have won a seat under the STV. Of all candidates in the Vancouver ridings I would have been happy to vote for 4 or 5 in a large riding, but as it turns out the candidate in my riding who was obviously going to win I don't like, so my vote has no real chance to be heard.


OK, it's election day and I'm surprised that there's no threads on voting or debates on who to vote for, especially for parks board, which affects us all as ulty players... I don't want to just go out and vote a slate.... any ideas out there?

Election day is a poor time to ask that question, SS. It's a good question -- just late on the call.

you're right, and I got off my lazy butt and did my homework. Read all the candidate profiles (they were hard to find) and voted based on them.

I wonder though, if unions and teacher associations can issue voting reccomendations and endorsements for council and school boards, can not the VUL do the same for parks board?

Sulty, we've only just gotten past the idea that the VUL can't use the forum for communication
about league happenings for fear of legal liability, let's take it slow...