Re: Fake Democracy

Apr 30, 2025

It is Sunday, the day before the election that some of the press continues to repeat is “the most important in our history”.  About a week ago I scribbled down two pages of notes, primarily to explain why I would not be voting in this election.  I thought about typing them up and sending them to the FN, but then said to myself “who cares”.  Then, I read Shane Peters’ excellent letter in last-week’s issue of the FN. and decide to contribute this follow-up.

I am approaching 80 years of age.  I attended a campaign speech of Pierre Elliot Trudeau in Sault Ste. Marie in summer 1968, and would have voted for “him” (i.e., his party), that year had I been able, but I was a student, moving between temporary university residences and summer jobs and was many miles from my “permanent residence” (i.e., my birth home.).  How many college/university students (the future leaders of our country) are still being denied their vote for the same reason in 2025?  (Add to that the carbon cost of driving to your polling station.)  From what I have gathered, Scandinavian countries are kilometers, miles, no, light-years ahead of us – they can actually vote from something called a “cell-phone”.  I lack one of those, but I have a computer which I assume could serve the purpose.  Instead, I am expected to to drive some 15 km to my polling station.

I have followed the local candidates in the FN, and any of the tracked three would make excellent MPs.  Still, all three are just regurgitating party lines. (as I understand it the Green Party candidate, who I would most likely vote for is not campaigning but is telling me to vote liberal).  Part of this, got me to thinking about easy options for getting rid of our first-past-the post electoral system. One is to simply rank your choice of candidates (1,2,3) on your ballot.  But the other which occurred to me on my “dog-walk” this afternoon is to assign the person I voted for the right to re-assign my vote to one of the leading candidates.  There is a term for this (single, re-assignable vote?).  My point is simply that we need to make every vote count, even in the smallest way, which our current electoral system does not.  I have heard no mention of electoral reform in the current election campaign, but if we do not deal with it, our democracy, such as it is, will continue to slide, probably southward.

I recently happened upon the chapter of Stephen Leacock’s “Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town”, that describes an election in ca. 1912.  (The book is freely available at Gutenberg.com). What occurred to me is how so little has changed in the last 100+ years.

I am still not sure if I will vote tomorrow, or who I will vote for – If I go I will probably vote Green, knowing I have just wasted my vote and contributed to the climate crisis to do so.  Logic would tell me to just stay home.

Don Cuddy