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View Full Version : Tomorrow is Election Day.



Tsuki yo
June 11th, 2014, 01:48 PM
And I have no one to vote for.

The blue team makes irresponsible decisions, has religious motives, and panders to corporate interests to the detriment of the people

The red team spends with no thought for revenue, do not represent the working class and will not bring about the change required to make my community grow

The orange team has made egregious errors in the name of vanity and hubris, have made no clear policy apparent other than shifting so far to the right as to be redundant, and struck down the most sensible budget tabled in decades

The green team have no publicity, no support, only one federal seat, and a platform made out of cotton candy


All of them participate in the worst kind of mud slinging, shitty name calling, and shady business practices.
All of them are crooks who will turn hardworking people against each other, so they can line their pockets unobserved.
None of them have any sense, or sensitivity to the complex nature of the problems they think they can tag line and motto away.
They are all terrible examples for people to follow, and are not the kind of people I would like to have leading my society.

Tomorrow is election day and I have no one to vote for.
No one to represent me.
And no interest in supporting these bloodless liches in their duplicitous schemes.

Flounder
June 11th, 2014, 02:03 PM
Perhaps this informative Public Improvement film will be of help?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK9IR9gmCHw

Scrawler
June 12th, 2014, 04:35 AM
I am glad my election choices are not so constrained.

Tsuki yo
June 12th, 2014, 06:37 AM
The past three elections I have voted in (two provincial and a federal) have all been the worst kind of farces. It's all the same candidate with a different coat of paint.

Scrawler
June 12th, 2014, 07:18 AM
The past three elections I have voted in (two provincial and a federal) have all been the worst kind of farces. It's all the same candidate with a different coat of paint.

I am lucky living in Canada, because I can participate in the electoral process if I want to, without the same kind of constraints that exist in other countries. I am glad for instance that I don't have religiously motivated candidates, as for instance in the US, where superstitious belief systems are an important part of their process. Likewise other places that make a claim to democratic processes, are actually a farce. One problem I am faced with is a dislike for many party leaders, so I focus my attentions on the representatives for my region. The importance about processes like that in Canada is that each group gets 4 years then if they are really bad, they will get turfed the next time. By this means of swinging around the center, we will never go greatly astray. But it only works if everyone, regardless of opinion participates. There are always the hardcore supporters, but it is the balance of opinion of the uneducated masses that swing the results, and that only works if they participate.

LagNut
June 12th, 2014, 01:42 PM
Do you have records of how your representatives voted? By this I mean a reasonably simple way to see (and more importantly show) exactly what they were doing during their tenure?

Strangely enough, I have found this very useful in our system. If you can point folks to look at the actual voting record, it has more weight than any argument I've been able to muster.

I refuse to give up because nothing makes any difference. Perseverance is always necessary.

conib
June 12th, 2014, 05:25 PM
“Why did he have to go to prison?”

“We put all our politicians in prison as soon as they’re elected. Don’t you?”

“Why?”

“It saves time.”


-- Terry Pratchett, "The Last Continent"

Tsuki yo
June 14th, 2014, 05:30 AM
Scrawler, I am in Canada (in Ontario), and the PC party has been filled with Tea Party style politicans for the past 10 years or more. Stephen Harper, Tim Hudak and all their cronies are "faith based" politicans and no better than US republicans.

Lagnut, we actually CAN see who votes where in the senate, and we can see what how often our MPs and MPPs show up for work. I write letters to my MP's and MPPs (the past four years I've been writing a lot), to inform them of what I think they're doing wrong, what they're doing right, and what I would like to see change.

This last election will see me writing to Elections Ontario, my MP, my MPP, the GG, and the Premier's office. Because this shit does not work any more. We just elected a majority provincial government, with only 31% of the possible electorate. To my mind, even if the other 69% of people didn't vote, that is not a majority, it's a minority and should govern as such.

snedwos
June 14th, 2014, 02:58 PM
Trouble is, where do you get the mpps to fill out the non voting majority.

Fptp is in some ways broken, yes. But it is better than dhondt style "proportional" representation as we have in Spain. Closed lists, local weighting (meaning regional parties are over represented), and no true connection between the electorate and they're so called representatives, who serve only the interests of their party. Their only job is to vote what their party leadership tells them to, or be pushed down to the bottom of the list (and thus not get a seat next time round). No rebellions ever.

Tsuki yo
June 15th, 2014, 01:28 PM
Oh, the Canadian people not only aren't rebelling, they're not asking for electoral reform either, we're all super complacent as our Federal gov tries to sell all of our jobs off to China, and removes the protections from our natural resources so that his (the PM's) gas-company buddies can have carte blanche on the Albertan wilderness. They're so busy getting rich off the oil in Alberta, that they're selling off the next generations future... again.

LagNut
June 16th, 2014, 11:09 AM
Tsuki yo, (snedwos),

I am truly sorry to hear this. It is not what I would have expected in Canada. We have family in BC, and my expectations were exactly the opposite. Well informed, vocal, worrying about the sort of small things that invite envy.

In Spain, I have less of a map of how the government fits in. I'm assuming fptp is federal parliament, territory(province) parliament? I'll be looking up the governmental system on Wikipedia. I suspect you both know people have been talking about how superior your parliamentary system Is over our ancient one.

Just a note of hope: we have seen improvement here recently. In California, our primaries have changed in a way to promote the moderate center. It does seem to be helping. We'll see how it works out over time. This change occurred because things got so out of whack here.

My liberal Christian prayers are with you.
Mike

Ernst Bitterman
June 17th, 2014, 12:28 PM
Oh, the Canadian people not only aren't rebelling, they're not asking for electoral reform either, we're all super complacent as our Federal gov tries to sell all of our jobs off to China, and removes the protections from our natural resources so that his (the PM's) gas-company buddies can have carte blanche on the Albertan wilderness. They're so busy getting rich off the oil in Alberta, that they're selling off the next generations future... again.

I don't know that we're all super-complacent, but those of us who are screeching seem to be doing so into a vacuum, or at least a sound-deadening froth of indifference. Last week's suggestion by the Australian PM that he and our abomination join forces as a sort of Voltron of Climate Change Enabling ("oh, sure, it may exist, but we can't let that affect current business practices") was mentioned on the news and followed by nothing much.

Actually, I suspect the sound-deadening froth may also have elements derived from people who are so terrified of losing their job in what we're told is a relatively benign economy that they dare not look away from their own inward concerns.
.

This last election will see me writing to Elections Ontario, my MP, my MPP, the GG, and the Premier's office. Because this shit does not work any more. We just elected a majority provincial government, with only 31% of the possible electorate. To my mind, even if the other 69% of people didn't vote, that is not a majority, it's a minority and should govern as such.

Testify. The fact that the national government's ogreish majority stems from getting 42% of the vote, and that works out to something like 25% of the POTENTIAL vote, underlines the serious flaws of this first-past-the-post thing we've inherited. I'd be a lot less concerned for the future of the nation if that result saw them with 42% of the seats in the house.

johnus
June 17th, 2014, 03:40 PM
The same here in the US. At one time we felt that the 3 Divisions in our Fed Govt would protect us. May be at one time it did, but now it seems that even the Courts are no longer concerned about the citizenry but only the corporation and the extremely wealthy. Sad to think that money is only thing that matters.

Chuasam
December 27th, 2015, 09:27 AM
The red team won and most Canadians are really happy about it.