Well, that’s disrespectful unless you smoke crack in his name.
3 Likes
The local radio station keeps claiming the conservatives will win a majority on Thursday. Any other BB in/from Ontario want to make an online support group for election night? Or if anyone knows of one, please let me know.
I’m going to lose my faith in humanity if Doug wins and it will probably be healthier for me to be around intelligent people when there is so much stupidity out there.
1 Like
While it is pretty easy to pour a shot for your fallen brothers, it is tough to figure out how to get the earth to do one hit off the pipe for you.
From the perspective of this US citizen trapped under Trump since 2016, he sounds overqualified. But then again, how can you have too much of a good thing? Give that man a government!
If he comes out and says, “I have seen the light, and I will do everything in my power to make Ontario an example of fairness and tolerance for the world. I will embrace the Leap Manifesto, give all my money to the poor, and give teknocholer a pony”, I still won’t vote for him, because he’s a fucking liar.
7 Likes
A Con majority is no longer such a certainty. I see a lot of NDP signs around my very middle-class neighbourhood. This well-timed lawsuit won’t change the minds of any fordnation mouthbreathers, but it may tip some undecideds off the fence.
If the worst happens, I’ll be glad of any support group, and will send virtual commiseration to all. Is there a shoulder-to-cry-on emoji?
1 Like
Our riding is certainly going NDP, given the wave of orange signs. But we’re “downtown elites”. The riding-by-riding polls are very worrying - showing Ford picking up enough rural and suburban ridings to make a comfortable majority in the house. Even though he probably won’t win the most votes overall. Seems like a pattern: he didn’t even win the most votes in the leadership race in his own party. Why do we keep designing electoral systems that can do this?
1 Like
I wish I could remember who to credit with this insight, but the worst scandals aren’t the ones that reveal something new, they are the ones that confirm what we already believed. I had some hope this will turn some people who were already suspicious of him away.
That said, weeks ago I predicted the NDP would get more votes and the conservatives would get a majority, and I’m shocked/appalled that it looks like I’m going to be right.
2 Likes
I’d prefer ranked ballots over any proportional representation scheme.
Ranked ballots would cut down on having to second-guess with strategic voting, without having to officially recognize the existence of political parties (which should never be encouraged).
I do hope the Liberals get at least 8 seats. Any less and they lose the right to ask questions in question period.
2 Likes
Yes, he’s been dead for over two years.
I think ranked ballots ought to be a really easy sell since they allow us to leave almost everything we do around elections in tact.
But it turns out turns out that any change is nearly impossible to do because we just love our worst-election-system-in-the-world as it is.
I think there is a real chance they get zero.
Have you met the United States? Our spiffy electoral system gifted us the current occupant of the Oval Office.
2 Likes
In Canada the executive and legislative branches are fused and there’s only one chamber, so you cast your one vote for your riding (analogous to district) representative and that’s it. Most likely you’ve voted for an ornamental teapot that does literally nothing but vote whichever way the party leader (who, if the party won, is also the leader of the executive branch) says to vote. Most likely you live in a riding with low competition between parties so your vote doesn’t even count for anything.
If you think that getting 46.1% of the vote and winning over someone who got 48.2% is bad, we’re very likely to have an election in a few days where one party will win the equivalent of a US majority-in-both-houses-and-governor off of a single vote in which the winning party gets 35 or 36% of the vote (and quite possibly get fewer votes than another party). Plus, the guy we are going to elect is Trump North.
I think that broadly speaking the US has a better election system than Canada. There are two caveats to that. First, gerrymandering is straight up poison that no election system with districts/ridings can survive. Second, every election system is vulnerable to having a significant portion of the population actually vote for the fascists.
4 Likes
That’s not a terrible idea. Sure would clear it up immediately for new users.
3 Likes
4 Likes
I vote nay. Gotta keep that Rob Ford joke alive.
1 Like
Partly because most people have never known anything else. I was having this exact conversation with my mother (me: FPTP is not a good system. Her: how else would you decide. All alternatives are worse). I tried explaining ranked voting to her… There may have been a glimmer of understanding, or she might have just been humouring me.
Basically, people are afraid a new system will favour “the other side”.
3 Likes
Back when Ontario actually had a referendum on a new election system, I heard someone call into a radio show. They said that they didn’t support any of the parties because they were all shit and there was no one to vote for. Then they were asked if they supported the election reform and they were also firmly against that.
I think everything is shit and therefore don’t change anything is probably an unfortunately common position. (So much for classical conditioning)
6 Likes
It wouldn’t solve the problem of certain long-term users who seem to suffer from recurring memory lapses* when it comes to the animate status of ex-mayor Ford and the existence of a thread about it.
*A serious flaw in certain professions, one would think. Historians, for example. 
1 Like
