A Saturday Calgary Herald editorial asks “What’s up with voter apathy?”, states that there are few defensible reasons for not going to the polls, and laments the fact that fewer than 25% of eligible voters put Stelmach in his majority position of power. In my opinion there are a multitude of very defensible reasons for not going to the polls, first and foremost among them being, “maybe they just came to their senses“, immediately followed by, “what’s the point?”
Lets look at the process.
From minute 1 of an election campaign everyone knows they are being intentionally mislead, even the politically hyper-partisan know (and condone) this, but rarely admit it because their party winning is all that’s important. Indeed those few souls who actually believe campaign promises and are genuinely upset when they discover the truth are usually derided as naive and foolish for even entertaining the idea that campaign promise “A”, “B”, or “C” was reasonable…. “they should have known better” ‘eh?
Essentially elections have become an exercise where people go to the polls, and, through his or her riding representative(*), cast a vote for the leader of the party they think has mislead them the least - and this is considered to be a reasonable way of deciding who should govern the country?
Answer: No.
So why should people participate? Why should people support such a system?
– and it gets no better after the election, the newly sworn in representative of the party leader (**) takes his or her seat in the House and votes when, and how, they are told to vote. What they may have said during the campaign is not important, and what their constituency may, or may not, think is equally unimportant - their job is to represent the party leader during votes in the House, to do otherwise is to risk expulsion from the party.
What is the point of pretending that anything else is happening?
And what is the point of supporting it?
Each time the voter turnout discussion takes place it’s determined to be the fault of the voter, and the answer of “maybe they came to their senses and refuse to support a flawed system” is the first one that’s discounted (very vocally) by both the politician and the partisan; the reason for that is (of course) that any change to the system would erode the power of the party… and gods know, they couldn’t possibly allow that to happen now could they?
Personally I look forward to the day when voter turn out is so low that not even the most politically partisan can claim that “their side” has been given a legitimate mandate to govern and some brave (and of necessity very rich) soul takes that to court.
__________
(*) Come on, you don’t really think that the candidate represents you do you?
(**) See above
You’re right stageleft. It is a pretty vast scam going on. The best we can do is moan and complain all the time hoping it will change the party policy. But for the most part, we have little to no power to do anything, even control our elected representatives and hold them accountable to promises. Take, for instance, the curious political oddity that is David Emerson. Elected a Liberal in a leftish part of Vancouver, he has absolutely no chance of winning as a Conservative. He not only flips to the Conservatives, but has become a cabinet member of prominence. It’s like a kick to the teeth of every Liberal voter.
No, Canadian democracy is assuredly broken. Partisanship ensures no dissent in politics, and the only ones making a greater mockery of this than our government is the Liberals who show up en masse to abstain, or don’t show up at all. Is it any wonder people don’t vote? Answer: no. The only reason I do vote is in order to placate my sense I am a part of it all.