And for the “other” voters…

The Green Party once again managed to get over a half a million votes with no elected representatives. They were far and away the most successful “other” party, but it’s hard to think where they might go from here. If they were unable to elect a candidate in an election that pretty much encouraged protest voting due to widespread disgust with the mainstream, it’s hard to imagine how they might build on their current level.

As for the other parties, none fared particularly well. The ultra-right Christian Heritage Party won 28,000 votes, and the ultra-left Marxist-Leninist and Communist parties combined for only 12,000 votes. The Marijuana voters must’ve been too busy smoking up to bother to vote; only 9,000 of them turned out. The Libertarians picked up a mere 3,000 votes, and the Canadian Action Party had 6,000 supporters.

None of them takes the prize for least-supported party, though. No, that award goes to the Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada, which obtained a whopping 72 votes – mostly, I suspect, from monkeys trained to mark Xs on ballots. Someone might’ve pointed out to these guys that the constituency to which they were pandering – the four-legged one – doesn’t tend to have a high turnout at the polls.

Still, you gotta kinda admire someone for being crazy enough to collect signatures, pay a registration fee, get their name on a ballot, maybe even knock on a few doors or put up a few posters, all to get a mere 72 votes. It speaks to the heart of our democratic process that anyone, no matter how nuts, can run for election.