Sign Of Desperation – Vote Swapping
photo credit: ItzaFineDay
If you live in one of the provinces that doesn’t really matter in this election (anywhere outside of Ontario and Quebec), you probably don’t have much of a say in who will run Canada.
A group has formed on Facebook that is called the “Anti-Harper Vote Swap Canada“. It demonstrates the desperation among the left.
The idea according to their page:
This group is designed as a forum for those who oppose Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party. It is imperative that they do not obtain a majority in the 2008 federal election. To prevent this from happening, those on the broad left and those concerned about the environment must cooperate.
The concept of the vote swap is simple: in a completely legal fashion, it allows voters in different ridings to swap votes to best ensure the Conservatives don’t win. Let’s say your preferred candidate has no chance to win your riding. You can swap that vote out with someone else in the group so that you can vote for the party that has the best chance to stop the Conservatives from winning the seat. This allows you to vote for your party of preference (and thus keep smaller parties alive) while doing your best to keep the Tories out of power.
Not sure I agree that they will be able to do anything other than split the vote among the left wing parties – in an insignificant way – but it shows how important it is that you do get out to vote this year.
If you’re into it – here’s a site that does the same, but isn’t partisan… although it won’t really work.
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September 14th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
I have always been a supporter of “first past the post” elections. In my opinion the senior party with the most votes gets to run the executive of our government. We have the equivalent of the proportionate vote in a minority parliament. In a minority, the smaller parties can form a coalition with the larger party if they wish.
This vote swapping seems to be a a populist but leftist answer to our system. We have no laws to prevent it so if it catches on it could subvert our current system.
Even so it will only catch on slightly since most people are not strategic but emotional or traditional in their voting preferences. They have only rudimentary knowledge of the issues.
That may be a good thing since it brings parties down to the basics and keeps out maliciously doctrinaire parties like the Greens and the NDP.
September 14th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Harper originally objected to May being in the leader’s debate because he accused her of being a surrogate for Dion. There were at least two pieces of evidence for this: First, a written agreement of cooperation between the Liberals and Greens, and second, the fact that the one Green member of parliament (and the reason May got into the debate) was a converted Liberal.
Harper had a good point. When different parties cooperate too much during an election, one has to question the fairness of a leader’s debate where one leader has to – alone – face multiple debaters who are in collusion and may have a tacit agreement not to criticize each other.
A system of vote swapping will give credibility to Harper’s charges of parties in collusion.
This sort of thing might backfire, as voters sympathize with a party seen as a victim of a rigged leader’s debate. The public might also view vote swapping as a corruption of the democratic processing, even if perfectly legal.