Roundup: Vote – and then stay involved

Posted on by

This is it – after that interminable election campaign (79 days! Eleven weeks!) it’s finally time to vote. And yes, you totally need to vote because that’s your duty and obligation for living in a democratic society like ours. When you do vote, remember that ours is a system whereby you are electing a person to fill a seat in Parliament, so that is always your primary consideration – party and leader should always be a secondary concern, and while important, the MPs you’re electing is your representative, and not the representative of the party to your riding. And then once the election is over, you get to hold that person to account. Not only that, but if the person or party you support didn’t win in your riding, fret not – your vote wasn’t “wasted,” as some would have you believe, because vote margins matter in the mandate that your local MP received. And so does your ongoing participation. Our system of democracy is not simply voting once every three or four years, but rather, it depends on constant grassroots participation, and that means you need to go out, join a riding association, help your chosen party determine future policy, help decide on who your riding’s next candidate is going to be (even if you have a sitting MP – let them know that they can’t take you for granted), and if things go the way they look determined to today, two of those parties just might be in leadership contests soon, and that means even more of a role for party members (as much as I disagree with membership selection of party leaders). In other words, voting today is just the beginning. But it starts with your casting a ballot, so go out and do that.

Good reads:

  • Here are final campaign roundups for the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP.
  • Former PMO legal advisor Benjamin Perrin (who savaged the government in his Duffy trial testimony), says that Harper lost the “moral authority” to govern.
  • Trudeau says his first 100 days in office would see his tax changes, along with reaching out to working with provinces for the Paris climate conference.
  • The government’s own hand-picked roundtable on culture and security says that the niqab has never been an issue. Go figure.
  • Here’s a look at how the Green Party was getting signatures for paper candidates in Quebec.
  • An event is being planned at the War Memorial to commemorate the October 22nd shooting.
  • Here’s how Rachel Notley’s appearance with Thomas Mulcair played out in Edmonton.
  • Public Service unions want the Clerk of the Privy Council to help restore the “neutrality” of the public service, yet won’t look in the mirror at their own conduct.
  • Chris Selley looks at the desperation of the Harper campaign to align themselves with the Fords at the very end.

Odds and ends:

Mark Critch writes about what it’s like to make fun of each of the leaders.

Here are Glen McGregor’s riding-by-riding predictions.