Tag Archives: election

Divided we fall

2 Replies

I’ve restarted writing this three times now. I’m not going to try again. I’ll let the ideas flow and just see where I end up.

I wish that I was surprised. I’m not. I’m disappointed. I’m saddened. But I’m really not surprised.

There are some amazing countries where freedom and equality are almost synonymous. There are countries where political differences do not polarize people into opposing factions. The United States of America is not one of them.

Why does it matter to me, a Canadian? Because ideas are memes that travel beyond borders. Because our biggest and only neighbour seems to be on the precipice of four years of strife, unease, and constant political banter. Because representation matters and I’m not a fan of what’s being represented.

We are entering an era of division. A polarized world where I have more questions than answers. Questions about global battles in Europe, the Middle East, and potentially Asia. About the battle for rights based on gender. A constant battle of words between ‘the left’ and ‘the right’.

I don’t foresee unity, I see a great divide. I foresee a constant and painful to watch news cycle that is filled with vitriol and malice. I hope not to see a loss of freedom, a ‘loss of Inalienable Rights’, which should be an oxymoron, but might not be. I hope for the best… I’m just not expecting it.

Divided we stand

Leave a reply

The BC, Canada election is over… almost. There are two recounts and enough close battles that we need to wait another week to have the late arriving mail-in votes get counted.

If things don’t change, the New Democratic Party, at 46 electoral seats, will be the minority leaders with 47 seats needed for a majority. The Green Party with their 2 seats will actually have some significant influence to ensure the minority government can actually get things done.

Over 2 million people voted and that represented over 57% of those eligible to vote. There was only a 1% gap between the two leading parties.

As I look to the south, I see another election coming, and another close race with a divided vote in November. Having at least 2 strong parties is a good thing in a democracy, but having both be as strong as they are can create havoc when actually trying to get things done.

This divisiveness we are seeing is baffling to me. It’s like our provinces, states, and countries have split personalities. Dichotomies to an extreme.

But if the mail in votes change things up here in BC, I don’t think we’ll see civil unrest. There might be more recounts, but there will also be a peaceful transfer of power. I don’t see the same thing happening down south. I hope I’m wrong.

Divided we stand, I hope we don’t fall.

Civic Duty

Leave a reply

Another Provincial election is upon us, October 19th, 2024. I voted early, last weekend.

I’ll never get tired of pushing the idea that it is not just a privilege but a civic duty to vote. I wish there were tax fines for not voting. It costs an Australian about $80 to not vote. They get 90% or more people voting. Meanwhile, we’ve been on a decline in BC, which is representative of most of Canada.

I wish people understood how fortunate we are to be able to vote in an open and free election. When I hear things like, “My vote doesn’t matter.” Or, “All the candidates/parties are the same.” Or any other excuse, I feel the speaker is missing the point. We live in a democracy. We have a choice of representation, and we have a duty to cast our vote for the person who represents us.

If we don’t vote, we are literally shrugging off a responsibility we have. We are dismissing a duty placed on us. We don’t do that at work, why do we think it’s ok to do that in our community?

Unsure who to vote for? This non-partisan website, (originally created by a student at our school years ago, and still maintained for elections across Canada), is a great place to start: https://votemate.org

The hypocrisy of democracy

Leave a reply

Democracy is supposed to empower people by a representative government that acts on behalf of and for the people. The hypocrisy of current democracy is that you are told that every vote matters and that you are the one who decides who is in power. The problem with that is that the platforms candidates run on are seldom what they enact. So you aren’t getting true representation of your wishes… and yet that’s what you voted for.

I’ve voted in every election since I became old enough to. I will continue to vote, to perform my civic duty, for the rest of my life. A democracy doesn’t work without a participatory public, and I would rather live in a democracy than any other system of government, and so I engage in the democratic process as expected.

But I’m tired of the hypocrisy. I want to see a party that can actually get things they platform on done. I want to see a system that is rigged for success rather than built on conflict, grandstanding, and hidden agendas. I want to see a party, once elected, get the support of other parties to accomplish their promised goals. Yes, other parties need to hold the current government accountable, but that is the ‘check and balance’ of an elected democracy. Fighting every move, every bill, and every promise the winning party made, simply to make the current government look bad during the next election cycle, actually undermines the strength of a democracy. The system is rigged to fail.

Give a party too much power and it is likely to reduce democratic freedoms, but don’t give it enough power and it becomes completely ineffective. This is a power dance we are seeing across the globe. What I fear is that democracy is not working like it should, and less free alternatives are rising in both power and appeal. With this we are also seeing less freedom.

Ultimately, democracies are now about voting for the extremes, and the extremes do not represent the vast majority of the people. But the majority don’t have a choice but to vote in a polarized way. So we aren’t voting for representation nearly as much as we are voting against values on the extreme side that is least like us. We aren’t voting for who we want to represent us, we are voting to avoid the election of someone we feel would represent us least.

And no matter who wins, we really aren’t represented by these representative governments. How do we change this? I don’t know. I’ll keep voting and doing my part, I just wish elected officials figured out a way to do the same and protect the very democracy that elected them.

A deviously democratic plan

Leave a reply

You’d have to be living under a rock to be unaware that the USA has an election coming up. And I’m probably not the only one holding the opinion that neither candidate is up to the job. Well, here is a devious non-partisan plan that I’d love to see Biden enact in order to flip the whole election on its head.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision that, “Presidents and former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts they took while in office”… has created an opportunity for Biden to prevent Trump from running.

Step 1: Biden could pass an unconstitutional executive order making it illegal for someone who has committed Trump’s non-presidential related crimes from running for president. Now if Biden stops here, it would cause absolute chaos, and great civil unrest. So he’d have to do one more thing at the same time.

Step 2: Biden could choose not to run in the next election. What this does is that it completely levels the playing field for both Democrats and Republicans. It leaves both parties needing to find replacements at the same time. Both parties can then find new, younger, more suitable leaders, and maybe the craziness of the US election could become about platforms and not about people.

This won’t happen, but could you imagine if it did? I could legitimately see either party winning a fair fight. It would all depend on the candidates the parties choose. In both cases a moderate candidate would have a better chance than an extremist. A too far right republican candidate would not win over the ‘Never Trump’-ers’, and a too far left democrat candidate would push this same group and more to the republicans. Suddenly the entire election would be about the platforms and not personalities.

There’s the plan: A democrat using a republican biased court decision to rebalance an election. And the entire world would be in a better place than it is leading up to this election as it stands right now.

VOTE! (A mostly non-partisan message)

I don’t have a big interest in politics, but from the time I’ve been old enough to vote, I have. The way I see it this is a civic duty and also the privilege of living in a democracy. Going back in my blog, I think I mention the message that it’s your duty to vote every election, and I make the message completely non-partisan each time. My party of choice might not win, but if everyone voted, then I would be happy with the result. However, when only a small percentage of people vote, then it can be easy for a loud but fringe group to end up getting a powerful position, and that upsets me.

So leading up to the municipal vote today, I shared the following message on Facebook and Twitter:

This ParentsVoice BC group vying for School Board Trustee positions is disturbing enough to me that I’m breaking my non-partisan voice. My message isn’t to tell you who you should vote for, just not to vote for them. In a society where everyone had to vote, I would not be concerned about them, but they will probably have supporters who are more likely to vote than other candidates have. And when under 40% of the population votes, each fringe vote is worth at least 2.5 votes worth of the entire pool of eligible voters. With many other candidates splitting the other votes and this cohort (3 in my municipality) are each getting votes from every one of their supporters, suddenly this fringe group has a chance at taking 3 out the 4 possible seats in the election.

So my message is that when a fringe group with close-minded ideas has a chance at an election, then it matters to voice concerns against them. It matters that they aren’t the loudest voices in a popularity contest. It matters that everyone votes… Not necessarily for the same candidates as me, just not for them. If enough people do that, they will be a minority, and they will not have the opportunity to influence the majority.

So for those of you in BC, Canada, take a bit of time out of your day today and VOTE!

Checkout Votemate to learn about the Canadian election

Developed by a former Inquiry Hub student, Votemate.org is a free site to help inform you about the upcoming election:

*(Great non-partisan resource for students!)

I received an update email:

Hello there!

There’s a federal election on September 20, and if that’s news to you, or you’ve just been finding the politicking, debating, and campaigning profoundly uninformative and useless, VoteMate is here to help.

We’ve created a whole new platform comparison pageallowing you to compare the platforms of each party on the issues you care about. It’s customized to you so you can focus on the information you need, and filter out everything you don’t. We’ve also got profiles on many of the candidates running this election! And we’ll be adding more features soon.

Here are the platforms you can compare:

This is fantastic for learning about candidates in your riding as well as comparing platforms and policies.

As mentioned, it’s also a great non-partisan resource to share and discuss with students. They can break into groups according to policies and platforms they care about, they can learn about candidates in their riding. They can use the rating tool 🙂😕🙁 to determine what Party they support based on platforms.

Check out Votemate.org! As I’ve shared before, I believe it is you duty as a citizen to vote… and it’s wise to make an informed choice.

—-

[Oh, and maybe support it too, (either one-time or once-a-month).]

A house divided

You don’t have to be American to know that the election today is one that matters significantly to a lot of people in the USA, and across the world.

Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.”

I am not aware of any democratic nation that has stood so divided? Twice.

I hope the foundation of American democracy can peacefully withstand the results of today and the coming months. I do not believe a new house can be easy built if this one crumbles.

It wouldn’t surprise me

I find it mind boggling that a day before the presidential election south of our border, I would not be surprised if I hear about bloodshed on Election Day. It wouldn’t surprise me to see partisan violence causing death in a open, democratic society, in the country touted as a symbol of freedom. How sad is that?

The FBI is investigating a Friday incident in Hays County, Texas, where a group of Trump supporters in trucks surrounded and followed a Biden campaign bus on I-35.1 At least one minor collision can be seen in footage of the incident. Texas Democrats canceled three scheduled events on Friday, citing “safety concerns.” Trump tweeted a video of the incident with the caption, “I LOVE TEXAS.”2 (Source)

When I read something like this, and see that the US president condones rather than criticizes the behaviour, I’m just flabbergasted! It’s like a principal of a school publicly congratulating a school yard bully. What behaviours can you expect to happen on the school yard after that?

How did we get here? What will the cost be tomorrow? Will people lose their lives trying to exercise their right to vote… in the USA… in 2020?

I really hope not, but at this point in time I wouldn’t bet against it. It just wouldn’t surprise me, and I find that very, very sad.

When you live in a democracy… VOTE

I’d like to say 2 things to my BC and American friends:

1. Vote

2. This is your civic duty.

It always amazes me how many people choose not to vote in an election.

“We do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.” – Thomas Jefferson

Poor excuses not to vote:

“My vote doesn’t matter.”

“No politician deserves my vote.”

“They are all the same.”

“The candidate I like will win/lose no matter if I vote or not.”

“One vote doesn’t make a difference.”

Two reasons to vote:

  • You have the right to do something others have died for in our countries, and will die for in other countries.
  • You squander your civic duty when you don’t.

So do your civic duty… VOTE.