I'm back to writing on this blog! Now that I don't have papers coming at me from every which direction I have to blog again! Anyway, on to blogging.
During an election, politicians are going to say things that annoy you. It's just inevitable. It's the nature of the beast. One thing has annoyed me more than anything else this time around, when people say this is an unnecessary election and talk about how many we've had recently.
Now, being that I think that democracy is a good way to run a country, and while our system is far from perfect, it is a good system, I believe that elections are good things. I support them. Democracy is not wasteful.
Harper has done a lot of complaining about how many elections we've had recently, yet he fails to acknowledge that he's called most of them. Also, we need to keep in mind this is a minority government. Not counting the 14th government (which shifted between a majority and minority government) Stephen Harper has run the two longest lasting minority governments in Canadian history. If you have a problem with how many elections we have been having, your problem ought to be with our parliamentary system, and not with the people calling the elections, because this is as good as it's ever been for minorities. That's my two cents anyway.
I'm excited to vote. I've been wanting to vote ever since the last election. The reason being that I have only ever voted conservative, and after the last election I realized something very important. I'm not conservative. Also, I really don't like Harper. If this is the case one may ask "why did you vote conservative?", well, hypothetical question asker, that is what I'm asking myself. I didn't really think before I voted. I just assumed I should vote conservative. I think it's because I assumed that it's the christian thing to do. Which is odd, because my dad was never one to simply vote conservative regardless of the situation, he always voted for who he felt was best at the time. I think it was just a general feeling I gathered from immersing myself into evangelical culture. When I shortly realized that I hadn't actually put any thought into who I wanted to vote for, I became excited for another election to come along.
This isn't a blog where I'm going to tell you the line of thought that led me to decide who I was going to vote for and try to encourage you to do the same, but I would certainly encourage you to put to use your critical thinking skills before you go to the polls. Whatever it may be, put some thought into it.
This brings me to my second point, that I don't care if you don't vote. We live in a culture that tries to guilt people into voting. It's true, I see it all the time, people who don't know or care about politics are told to "at least vote" and people who don't vote are told they're not allowed to complain about the government. I never understood that logic, shouldn't they have more right to complain? After all, it wasn't them that made the wrong choice.
Guilting someone into voting is roughly the same as guilting someone into going to church. Who cares if they're there? Shouldn't they be putting some thought into why they're doing what they're doing? I'd like to see more people think about who to vote for. If you honestly put a lot of thought into it and decided that your vote is best left unused, go ahead and do that. Maybe it's because you don't like any of the leaders, maybe it's because you don't like our political system, whatever, if you've put your thought into it and decided that's what's best then do that. I didn't vote provincially or municipally, and that was because I frankly didn't have a clue what the issues were, or who the candidates were, so I didn't want a mindless vote going into it. Now, by my own admission, I should have researched it. Next time I'll try. But I honestly feel that not voting is better than voting because you've been guilted into it. Personally, I'd rather not have people who don't care, and don't think about their vote deciding who's going to run this country.
The other thing is that in my riding, The conservatives got 55% of the vote, whereas the NDP, in second place, got 15%. That's an enormous gap. This riding will always be right wing. It doesn't matter. It's very frustrating to know that essentially, my vote can't make a difference. Now I know the logic that "if everyone who thought their vote couldn't make a difference got together to vote, they could!" but let's be honest, even among those who don't vote, this is a right wing riding. It always has been. So I'm not even sure I can pin down why I want to vote. Maybe because even though I know it will have no effect on who goes to parliament to run our country, I hope on some level, my voice can be heard. Maybe if we can swing the popular vote in one direction which seems different from the overall results, people will realize we need to fix our electoral process. It's a long shot... it's basically a pipe dream. I don't know. Maybe I'm just giving into the pressure around me to vote, no matter how futile that vote is. Maybe I'm overanalyzing this, maybe I'm underanalyzing it. Either way, I'm trying. I'm trying to figure out how to best use my vote, and I encourage you to do the same. Whether that's voting the same way you always do, changing it up, or refusing to vote entirely, just put some thought into it. Because in the end, I'd like to at least believe what you do with it is important.
