20081014

The 2008 Election

It looks as though Canada will again be under a minority conservative regime until we hold our next election. The results of our 2008 election are almost identical to that of 2006 (300 000 000 #$!@#^@!ing dollars later) but with a few notes. Voter turnout was only 59% - the worst in the history of Canada - with only 13832972 of 23401064 registered electors casting a ballot (that does not include unregistered voters). However, I'm happy to see that the Liberals, NDP, Bloc Quebecois, and Green Party managed to prevent a majority conservative government disaster.

It's terribly tragic that Canadians were seduced into voting for the conservative party out of fear for our economic situation - a situation which the conservative party must take a large part of responsibility for. Please let me take this opportunity to apologize to the rest of the world; Canada had her chance to show the world's developing nations how we, the developed nations, deal with environmental issues. By allowing ourselves to continue subjugation to Harper's slippery oil-mafia, we have basically written an environmental cheque that our asses cannot cash.

Green party results by province
ProvinceNumber of Votes%
Alberta1115059
British Columbia1687239
Manitoba317237
New Brunswick226836
Newfoundland32742
Northwest Territories7526
Nova Scotia350228
Nunavut6758
Ontario4114448
Prince Edward Island34885
Quebec1262994
Saskatchewan232796
Yukon188013
Green Votes826747
The size of a metropolitan city...
6%
and we still don't have 1 single seat in the house of commons


I hope that the Harper government acknowledges that poor voter turnout had a huge hand in their minority victory yesterday. There are many Canadians who were unable to make it to the ballot box due to extenuating circumstances - the working class in particular - a huge contrast to Harper's generally upper-class representation. On the other hand, there are probably a lot of Canadians who have such little confidence in our system that they choose not to vote. Some vote because they have not been following the debates.

One thing that was very interesting to observe is that None of the metropolitan cities in Canada (Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal) were won over by the Conservative party. My guess is because we are the ones who primarily have to deal with the smog. People in urban environments are usually have the lesser addiction to oil.

In any event, the Green Party has achieved such an amazing increase in voter turnout from previous years. However, of the ~ 14 million people who voted, ~ 1 million of those voted for the Green Party, yet we still don't have a single seat representing our interests in the House of Commons due to the MP system.

Seriously, we need to reform the way that we vote in this country - why not assign a score to each political candidate instead of voting for a single one? Also, account for "no-shows" and "no-confidence" votes. Mathematically, proportional representation just makes more sense. Account for the loss of power by rural communities by giving rural areas more municipal and regional power, while the interests of the greater public are represented proportionally.

No comments: