My point is that the same people who will happily wait for hours to meet their material needs will whine about the inconvenience of waiting to exercise their democratic rights. I find that disturbing.
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44th Canadian Federal Election
- Thread starter Richard White
- Start date
karledice
Active Member
Useless waste of $600m of TAX PAYERS money on the same results
Money small businesses and poor families need
Money small businesses and poor families need
DirectionNorth
Active Member
We also don't do a good job of making voting feel useful, both with our messaging and with our electoral system.
Admiral Beez
Superstar
So, what happens now to Paul and the Green Party? I voted for Paul in 2020, as did 8,250 or 32.7% of my fellow Toronto Centre neighbours. But in 2021 Paul garnered only 3,672 votes or 8.5%, meaning she was rejected by more than half of her supporters from the year before, including me. Surely she must go?
Lennox970
Active Member
Voting Australian style:
1. Make it compulsory.
2. Hold it on a Saturday at the local school.
3. Make it a fun event to attend and for local groups to do fund raising by providing food and music.
If Aussies have their 'sausage democracy' lets have our own maple leaf 'hot dog democracy'!
picard102
Senior Member
Good news, that wasn't the last $600m in the governments pocket.
Small businesses and poor families will still receive the same amounts as before the election.
Northern Light
Superstar
Voting Australian style:
1. Make it compulsory.
2. Hold it on a Saturday at the local school.
3. Make it a fun event to attend and for local groups to do fund raising by providing food and music.
If Aussies have their 'sausage democracy' lets have our own maple leaf 'hot dog democracy'!
There are other countries with even better turnout........
From: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/voter-turnout-by-country
The media yesterday took two different approaches. Steve Ryan on CP24 played up the inconvenience angle big time. CTV played up the “voting is an important right” angle, interviewing new Canadians and first time voters.
I would rather see engaged voters in a line than empty voting booths.
And there will always be inconveniences, but in the many years I have been eligible to vote, I haven’t missed it once despite work, kids, illness and travel. There is always a way.
MisterF
Senior Member
Fair enough. But my point is that the fact that people can make time or that voting is more important than a Playstation doesn't matter. Australia's solution works. Lecturing people doesn't.
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
Considering this is the first time this sort of issue had cropped up, it seem to be a pandemic-specific problem that doesn't require a permanent change. Also I am sure there will be killjoys who complain about moving voting day to a Saturday, eating into free time or whatever. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't problem.
AoD
Northern Light
Superstar
To be fair, we have in fact seen this issue before, just not on this scale.
But highly urbanized ridings do seem prone to having insufficient polling stations, or workers at those stations, or sometimes ballots.
It usually gets sorted...........the typical worst-cases are more like 40m waits, not 2 hours.
Still.
****
Also, pre-pandemic, our voter turnout levels were already low, they aren't in the global top 10 I posted above.
While I'm not sure weekend votes are part of the solution; and I am sure they are nowhere near the entirety of it.........
I don't think we can be at all satisfied with the status quo.
Richard White
Senior Member
Even I vote in the Hungarian Elections.
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
There was a proposal to extend the voting period but I think it died on the table. Anyways, I am not entirely convinced that inconvenience (as opposed to indifference) is the driver behind low voter turnout.
AoD
Northern Light
Superstar
Indifference though isn't merely apathy.
Its a mixture of apathy combined with not believing in the integrity of the electoral system (ie results don't reflect the will of the electorate); lack of faith in every political party, at least any that has tasted power, due to extraordinary numbers
of commitments crassly discarded; substantive actions taken without mandate or consultations and crass-acts of self-dealing.
None of the above excuses one from not voting; making some difference is better than making none.
But allowing that some people are less than committed to good citizenship is not to excuse a system that allows for the above, to excess.
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
Is that any different from any previous government in history though? I find it hard to believe that somehow the governments we had now are any worse in these regards than any other point in history.
AoD
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