Julianna Yau’s blog

This year, I have been more engaged with the political malström than ever before, thanks mainly to the Conservatives’ multiple hits to the arts sector.

And while I have blogged on various issues, met with two of the candidates in my riding (and didn’t hear back from the Green candidate), I am still unswayed from my opinion that there is no party which full represents me. Even at the candidate level, I am completely confident that I can be heard and understood by Cindy Jacobsen and that Andrew Telegdi would know exactly how to navigate through the political system. My unrest lies in my confidence for those two qualities not being with a single candidate.

I doubt I am alone in not being a partisan voter. I have talked to many people about how they plan on voting, and see two types of voters: die-hard supporters of a particular party vs. people who want to vote for the party which they see as the lesser of the evils. It feels like our political and representational system has become so broken that we now have political equivalents of religious tendencies, spanning from the evangelical to the church-goers to the agnostic to the atheists to the non-religious.

What the internet has made possible for this election is the push for strategic voting. Websites like Pair Vote, Anyone But Harper and Vote For Environment are doing what they can to prevent the Conservatives from winning a majority government, because Canada is not a Conservative party. The response to this has been split at every level, with some parties and some candidates supporting anti-Conservative voting, while some are aghast by the very thought of it.

What boggles my mind is why some parties feel that it is okay for them to run ads or have debate responses which are essentially “vote for me because I’m not the other party”, but also discourage us from voting strategically. Or why some of the people I’ve talked to are so religiously supportive of their party of choice that they would actually prefer another party win in their riding and/or win a majority government than “give their vote to any other party”. And while that isn’t an issue in all ridings, there are some where you would be giving your vote to another party by voting for yours.

Is all of this activity going to initiate another push for proprotional representation already in use by over 70 other countries, or for the preferential voting system used by Australia? I hope so. But I’m not holding my breath.