Well, I exercised my democratic right to vote this morning. It took all of 15 minutes: wait in line, present ID, check the ballot, and go. Simple, straightforward . . . and yet for some reason I voted with a new appreciation for the process this morning. Maybe it was a reflection that it’s a minority of the world that has this basic right.
And while I know that, thanks to our relatively undemocratic ridings system, my vote probably won’t matter in the least, it still felt good to be able to participate in – well, maybe not exactly democracy, but at least our version of it. Sure, the system is corrupt and the government forces through unpopular legislation despite the objections of the citizens. But it’s a far cry between that and what people in most of the world have to contend with, under oppressive dictatorships with no rights whatsoever.
So make sure to vote. It’s not only your obligation, it’s your most precious right!
the PLQ, ADQ, and PQ have all agreed to implement some sort of Proportionate representations system — the fitrst in Canada.
So this may be the last election solely First-past-the-post in QC.
(Don’t blame the PQ entirely. The PLQ used to love the undemocratic system, as the overrepresented rural areas used to be pro-Liberal a decade or two ago)
And before that they were pro-Union Nationale, and you can bet Duplessis never batted an eyelash at the injustice of the system. He just brought powerlines and electricity to rural Quebec, and his corrupt government kept getting re-elected year after year.
All of the parties have agreed to some sort of reform IN PRINCIPLE, but you can bet that if the PQ gets elected this time, it will evaporate into thin air like most election promises tend to do.
CFCF is predicting a Liberal majority.
The same sort of problem happens in the US but is less obvious since there is only 2 major parties. In the last election it would not have made a difference if a single person voted for Bush in New York or California, or for Gore in Texas.
Votes for Nader certainly were important in Florida however where Bush won with a minority of the vote.
No, individual votes in each ridings do matter. Because the governement is the party that gets the most seat elected. The problem is that ridings have wildly different number of consistituents. Typically french speaking “rural” ridings are much smaller then bilingual “urban” ridings.
However, in my riding (Outremont which for federal elections has it’s own riding…) a vote for anyone but the Liberals was a waste of time. In my federal riding, Irwin Cotler won with 92% of the votes… Subsequently I live in a upper-middle class white jewish english speaking neighbourhood that is paired with a mostly poor to middle class immigrant english speaking (and a significant number of people who speak neither french nor english) neighbourhood.
Oh and the provincial riding is also paired with Outremont which is upper-middle/upper class french neighbourhood with significant english population. And most of the hassidin jews in Montreal.