Canookian Politics Thlead; Jakob's dead, long live Iggy !

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Remington Steele

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(09/30/08 10:50 PM)

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MakePaulaCry wrote:

How are they polling? If it's not close, then vote swap.

Googled polling data as of September 29, 2008 in some close Edmonton ridings:
Hey, where did you find that stuff? I could look up my riding.

Axle the Bulldog

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(09/30/08 10:50 PM)

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How does this vote swap work? Can't one person say their gonna vote for a specific party and then vote for their own anyways, getting your vote for their party?

Remington Steele

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(09/30/08 10:54 PM)

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See the red, bolded parts.

Election

I'll trade my Layton for your Dion

SCOTT HARRIS / scott@vueweekly.com

Imagine the following: you're a Liberal supporter in the riding of Edmonton-Strathcona who's worried about the Conservatives forming a majority on Oct 14. You want to support the Grits, but you realize that NDP candidate Linda Duncan-who finished second in 2006, losing to incumbent Conservative Rahim Jaffer by 4856 votes-has a better chance to take the riding than Claudette Roy, who would have to more than double the 9391 Liberal votes from 2006 to unseat Jaffer.

It's predicaments like this, which force Canadians to choose between voting strategically and voting their conscience, that motivated 26-year-old Hamilton native Mat Savelli to launch the "Anti-Harper Vote Swap Canada" Facebook group.

The idea is simple: rather than marking your ballot for a candidate who has no real chance of winning in your riding, you agree to "swap" your vote with someone in another riding anywhere in the country who is faced with a similar-but opposite-predicament.

For example, the Liberal supporter in Edmonton-Strathcona sends a message via the Facebook page to Savelli, who then pairs them up with an NDP supporter in, say, the Ontario riding of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, where the Liberals lost to the Conservatives in the last election by just 203 votes. The result-if enough people participate- is the Edmonton seat goes from Tory blue to NDP orange and the Liberals notch another Ontario seat.

This new approach to strategic voting has received a lot of attention since Savelli launched the page Sep 10.

"We've gotten responses from every province, almost every riding at this stage," Savelli explains over the phone from Oxford, where he's currently completing a PhD in history. "We've already got over 3000 members on the group and more than 500 people have already sent in information saying they're interested in swapping."

Two days later, another 1500 people had joined the group.

While Savelli started the initiative in large part to prevent a Conservative majority, he says it's also about encouraging a dialogue about how best to change the current electoral system so that thousands of Canadians don't feel like their vote doesn't really count.

"It's not purely an anti-Harper thing; it's also wrapped up in this idea of democratic reform," he says. "I just have this ingrained disgust with this system that sees majorities elected with less than 50 per cent, less than 40 per cent of the popular vote."

Frustration at the lopsided results of the first-past-the-post system was also the motivation for Gerry Kirk, who launched the completely non-partisan pairvote.ca after stumbling upon a similar site in the US, where the tactic of vote swapping (also called vote pairing) was used-albeit unsuccessfully-in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections to give Ralph Nader supporters a way to maximize votes for their candidate without handing vital swing states to George W Bush.

"It's kind of like a 21st-century tool to overcome a 12th-century voting system," Kirk says. "It's not a cure, but in some ways it points to the desperation people have to go through to make their vote count."

Unlike Savelli's Facebook group, Kirk's site, which has had over 100 people sign up to swap votes in just three days, welcomes Tories who also don't want to see their votes wasted.

"It hits all parties. A lot of people think it's just something for the left, but think of all the Conservatives who live in Toronto or the 905 belt-there's plenty of examples of how people across the political spectrum are hurt by our voting system. It's more about democratic reform than it is about right versus left," he says.

"What I really want is for people to realize that in order to truly get the government we want we need to change the system itself. The system is fundamentally broken," Kirk argues.

Both agree that Canada should introduce some form of proportional representation which makes the percentage of seats a government holds in Parliament more closely match the percentage of the popular vote they receive.

Savelli adds that the option to swap votes also means that voters won't be afraid to support new parties such as the Greens, bringing much-needed diversity to the House of Commons.

"I think it's a disgrace that people are afraid to support a third political way or a fourth or a fifth or whatever, because the will is there but there's this fear of Harper or a Conservative majority that stops people," he says. "So it's strategic voting, but strategic voting that supports third parties rather than simply saying, 'Well, let's all just jump behind the Liberal party.'"

both sites stress that vote swapping is completely legal, and while Elections Canada officials had announced they were investigating vote swapping sites, they decided on Sep 17 that there was nothing legally suspect about the tactic.

"Encouragement to vote in a particular way is not prohibited under the Canada Elections Act, nor is the invitation to take part in strategic voting, whether it is on the Internet or in other forms," confirms Marie-France Kenny, the Alberta media relations advisor for Elections Canada.

But she does offer a caution to voters who are thinking of taking part.

"Electors should be cautious that they may be subject to misrepresentation, such as someone acting under multiple or false identities to trick them into voting for someone or other," she warns. "And they have no assurance that the agreement to vote swap will be carried out or that it can be verified after the fact."

Savelli concedes that is a major shortcoming of vote swapping. He says that there have already been attempts by "a really high number of Tories [to] blatantly try to sabotage the system," but that he has implemented a number of security measures to stop people offering multiple swaps or switching profiles.

And while it's impossible to ensure both people agreeing to a swap will follow through, Savelli says vote swapping still has the potential to shift the result of some contests.

"Of course there are going to be people who say they're going to swap but then they're going to have a last-minute change of heart," he admits. "But we accept that. The thing is, if you can build up enough people to participate, then you're in a position where even if 10 per cent of them don't follow through with the swap you have a significant number and you might possibly affect a riding or two." V

Editor's note: an error in the number of votes that appeared in the print version of this article has been corrected.

Got something to say? Send a letter to the editor.
letters@vueweekly.com

Goosehead

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(09/30/08 10:55 PM)

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yep, it's the honour system. Although the organisers may have some way of trying to filter out fakers, but I don't know. You could always try to find a friend you trust in another riding as well.

Goosehead

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(09/30/08 10:56 PM)

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hey! Scott Harris is a friend of mine! He'll be delighted to hear that he's being cited in such a reputable forum

Axle the Bulldog

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(09/30/08 11:00 PM)

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Thanks for the google alert.

In my riding, the Cons are getting 49%, Libs 30%, AG 7%, WAP 10%, and NDP 4%.

Who the fuck are AG and WAP? And why do I always read WAP as WOP? And where the fuck are the Greens?

Last Edited By: Axle the Bulldog 09/30/08 11:04 PM. Edited 1 times.

Goosehead

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(09/30/08 11:02 PM)

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I have no idea who those parties are. What's your riding? Maybe at least one is a regional party of some strange sort?

Axle the Bulldog

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(09/30/08 11:04 PM)

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I'm Calgary Nose Hill. I'm scared to find out what kind of regional parties are hiding out in the depths of Alberta.

Goosehead

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(09/30/08 11:04 PM)

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Here's a great party: "The Work Less Party", their slogan "Alarm clocks kill dreams!"

http://www.worklessparty.org/

Goosehead

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(09/30/08 11:08 PM)

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I imagine WAP is Western Alienation Party, or Western Alliance Party, or somesuch. But it's not a registered political party. Check here for a list of them: http://www.elections.ca/c...par&lang=e&textonly=false

MakePaulaCry

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(09/30/08 11:11 PM)

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My riding: Conservatives are projected to win with 19,000 followed by the NDP with around 14,000.

Ain't it funny how in some ridings, there are roughly 40,000 votes, yet other ridings have just over 10,000 votes?

Remington Steele

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(09/30/08 11:59 PM)

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I could only find candidates from the 4 major parties for your riding, Axle.

Parties
Code	Party Name
AG	ALBERTA GREENS
AP	ALBERTA PARTY
CP - A	COMMUNIST PARTY - ALBERTA
IND	INDEPENDENT
LIB	ALBERTA LIBERAL
NDP	ALBERTA'S NDP
PC	PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE PARTY
SC	ALBERTA SOCIAL CREDIT PARTY
SPA	SEPARATION PARTY OF ALBERTA
WAP	WILDROSE ALLIANCE PARTY

bassoon291

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(10/01/08 12:01 AM)

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With Harper being from Alberta

Harper is NOT from Alberta. He was born in Toronto's West End/Etobicoke, a rich-ish area, and went to Richview CI, a high school for well-off white kids. He didn't move out west until he was in university.

Riding-wise, yes, but he's from Toronto, and he hates that fact and deeply resents it.

MakePaulaCry

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(10/01/08 12:23 AM)

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