![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Kate Beaton's Steven Harper looks somehow much more Prime Ministerial than he does in the real world; I think it's the Diefenbaker jowls.
So, it's election time! I am going to assume the reader's general familiarity with Canadian politics, because I am more interested in complaining than in educating, and it's kind of late. A day in first-past-the-post is a day for thinking about strategic voting; with less than eight hours to go before I'll be riding down to our polling station, most of which I'll presumably spend sleeping rather than deliberating, I'm still not sure which way to go. As faithful readers may recall, my MP was kicked out of the Liberal caucus about a year ago over allegations about campaign finance irregularities (for which I understand that he was later acquitted). After a while as an Independent, he recently joined the Green Party, as a result of which you may recall that Elizabeth May was able to participate in the televised leaders' debate. (Yes, I live in that riding.) Since this is the only riding with an incumbent Green MP, it seems like it's likely one of those ridings in which the Greens stand the best chance of getting someone voted in, so it's not a useless vote; plus, I am more persuaded by their platform than I am by anybody else's; and really, I have this slightly ignoble interest in keeping Blair Wilson around just so that I can see what he does next.
On the other hand, this is traditionally a riding closely split between the Liberals and Conservatives; I think that Wilson won it by less than a thousand votes, out of about fifty thousand cast in 2006. So although it's possible for those who dare to vote Green to get a Green candidate, it seems rather more likely that we'll split the vote just enough to get a Conservative. Back on the first hand, though, I hate choosing for that reason. I'd like to resist the tendency toward two-party systems as much as possible. Although Stephane Dion is definitely my preference of the two likely candidates for Prime Minister (and I think that he'd be not just relatively but objectively a good one), a while ago he was widely quoted as having said that "a vote for the NDP is a vote for the Conservatives"; and while I don't know the precise context in which he said that, it seems pretty clear that he didn't follow up with, "and therefore our voting system is obviously defective and as Prime Minister I'll make it a priority to fix it". (Ms. May, by contrast, mentioned during the debates that one of her first acts, were she to become Prime Minister, would be to implement some form of proportional representation. Yes, this is in her self-interest as a third party leader, but it's also in the interest of voters, so don't the other leaders feel at least a little embarrassed?) It is a traditional Liberal tactic to try to scare me into a compromise vote this way; even if that didn't irritate me, I do try to make a general rule of taking the more dangerous but more potentially rewarding way out of prisoner's dilemmas, which in this case means voting for candidates, rather than against them.
But the Georgia Straight thinks that I ought to vote Liberal, and Elizabeth May herself arguably agrees. I do think that a Conservative majority would be rather terrifying, and another minority still pretty deletirious. My conscience remains divided.
So, it's election time! I am going to assume the reader's general familiarity with Canadian politics, because I am more interested in complaining than in educating, and it's kind of late. A day in first-past-the-post is a day for thinking about strategic voting; with less than eight hours to go before I'll be riding down to our polling station, most of which I'll presumably spend sleeping rather than deliberating, I'm still not sure which way to go. As faithful readers may recall, my MP was kicked out of the Liberal caucus about a year ago over allegations about campaign finance irregularities (for which I understand that he was later acquitted). After a while as an Independent, he recently joined the Green Party, as a result of which you may recall that Elizabeth May was able to participate in the televised leaders' debate. (Yes, I live in that riding.) Since this is the only riding with an incumbent Green MP, it seems like it's likely one of those ridings in which the Greens stand the best chance of getting someone voted in, so it's not a useless vote; plus, I am more persuaded by their platform than I am by anybody else's; and really, I have this slightly ignoble interest in keeping Blair Wilson around just so that I can see what he does next.
On the other hand, this is traditionally a riding closely split between the Liberals and Conservatives; I think that Wilson won it by less than a thousand votes, out of about fifty thousand cast in 2006. So although it's possible for those who dare to vote Green to get a Green candidate, it seems rather more likely that we'll split the vote just enough to get a Conservative. Back on the first hand, though, I hate choosing for that reason. I'd like to resist the tendency toward two-party systems as much as possible. Although Stephane Dion is definitely my preference of the two likely candidates for Prime Minister (and I think that he'd be not just relatively but objectively a good one), a while ago he was widely quoted as having said that "a vote for the NDP is a vote for the Conservatives"; and while I don't know the precise context in which he said that, it seems pretty clear that he didn't follow up with, "and therefore our voting system is obviously defective and as Prime Minister I'll make it a priority to fix it". (Ms. May, by contrast, mentioned during the debates that one of her first acts, were she to become Prime Minister, would be to implement some form of proportional representation. Yes, this is in her self-interest as a third party leader, but it's also in the interest of voters, so don't the other leaders feel at least a little embarrassed?) It is a traditional Liberal tactic to try to scare me into a compromise vote this way; even if that didn't irritate me, I do try to make a general rule of taking the more dangerous but more potentially rewarding way out of prisoner's dilemmas, which in this case means voting for candidates, rather than against them.
But the Georgia Straight thinks that I ought to vote Liberal, and Elizabeth May herself arguably agrees. I do think that a Conservative majority would be rather terrifying, and another minority still pretty deletirious. My conscience remains divided.
