Reflections on the Ontario Election

Well another election has gone by in Ontario and we no longer live with the threat of an impending election hanging over our heads.

And we messed up the pollsters again too.

Frankly, I’m a bit surprised, I really didn’t think that anyone would be able to pull off a majority in Ontario at this time.  It’s nice when the voters surprise you, unless of course your one of those pollsters who are now scrambling to explain why their numbers were in fact, more or less, pretty accurate. (sort of)

My first thoughts are about Kathleen Wynne.

Walk softly Kathleen, you have a majority, but it is not a traditional majority.  You were granted a licence by the people of Ontario to steer the ship, you were not handed a mandate.  Rather, you were granted an opportunity to steer Ontario through the next four years by a grassroots coalition made up of all parties including unhappy NDP and PC supporters.

This election was marked by a concerted effort to prevent Tim Hudak from gaining the Premiership rather than an effort to return Kathleen Wynne to that position.  Voters reached across party lines to support the candidates best able to stop Tim Hudak, not necessarily to support you.

That said, I believe that you are probably the best choice to show a willingness to listen to what the opposition has to offer and to engage in conversation with the Members across the aisle.  Let’s hope that all parties are willing to speak out in the best interests of Ontario and willing to work together and not like what we see up Ottawa way where partisanship rules the day.

My second thoughts are for those who decided to protest the election by declining their votes.

While I’ll applaud your willingness to at least show up, which puts you head and shoulders above those who can’t be bothered to go to the polls, I still think many of you missed the boat.

If none of the candidates in your riding represent you, I can agree with declining your vote.  That said, the offerings of the parties is generally pretty wide ranging and unless you are a diehard Libertarian or Communist, there should be a party or at least a candidate that meets the majority of your needs or wishes.

Maybe I should be thanking you instead.  The people who didn’t bother to vote and those who declined their ballot amplified my vote and those of every other voter who actually cast a ballot in the election.  Only about 50% of the voters in Chatham Kent bothered to vote, that’s up from the last election, and the incumbent won with only 38% of the votes that were cast.

Don’t like the PCs?  Well by staying home or declining your vote you let someone like Rick Nicholls win with just over 19% of the support of eligible voters in Chatham Kent.  Think about it, less than 1 in 5 people in my community have decided that Rick will represent us in Toronto.  Your community is likely similar.

And finally…

In the run up to Election Day, I heard that nasty old canard “If voting could change anything, they’d make it illegal.”

In case you haven’t noticed, that’s what they’ve been working on.  The party structure has warped the Legislatures to the point where unless you are a member of a major party, you don’t get to do much more than vote.  Since then, they’ve aimed their guns at the voters…

The Election Laws that the Harper people brought in were based (in part) on the laws in use in Ontario, requiring you to provide ID to be able to vote.  We never had this before, we never had complaints of voter fraud then either.

Since then we have seen (at the federal level) a move to make it more and more difficult to vote.  For people in the mainstream, with Drivers Licences and other pieces of “good” ID, these changes aren’t too horrid, but for those outside of the mainstream, those on the fringes, they’re making it harder for them to be able to vote.

Voting is a right, and it is a right we need to defend.

When you look back at the bad places in history, where rights were denied, where evil took over the governments, they didn’t make a huge change all at once.  They just make little snips, here and there in places that people really don’t seem to care about.

The homeless, the impoverished, we don’t really care about them so it’s OK that they don’t get to vote.  The young?  They never voted anyways.

I mentioned that we elected a man with less than 20% of the eligible vote.  If that plays out across the board, then it is entirely possible that only 20% across the province selected the crew that will sit in Toronto, and if we keep going the way we are going, Ottawa will be the same.

Do you really expect that people who get in on 1/5^th of the available vote actually care what you think?  Our wonderful rep blames the unions for stopping Hudak from imposing his will on Ontario.  I’m sure he’ll be very happy to help me, a trade unionist with any issues I might have.

If we really want them to pay attention, we have to make the first move.  We need to take the reins and show up and vote.  It only takes a few minutes to read a couple of newspapers in the real world or the Internet to see what the parties are standing for, enough that you can make a half way informed decision on who to vote for.  If we start to show up on Election Day, maybe they’ll show up the rest of the time?

I don’t know how true it is, but I have been told more than once that if you go to your elected member’s office for help, they check the list to see if you voted.  Keeping a voter happy may gain them a vote, a non-voter gets shuffled down the pile.  Why should they care about a non-voter?  If they didn’t vote last time, they probably won’t vote next time…

If there are a lot of dancers on the floor, the band plays what the people want.  If no one dances, the band plays what they want instead.  Politics is like that too.

That’s about it, for now…

BC

Hello Ontario, Some Poll-erizing Thoughts on Polls.

I’m having a bit of a conversation with someone who appears to be a supporter of the PC party of Ontario.

Currently the polls are showing the Ontario PCs and Liberals to be in a dead heat in terms of support.  However the seat count favours the Liberals by 5.

Now the person I’m talking with thinks this is terrible, and thinks that there is some kind of scam taking place here.  He has convinced himself that Ontario has some special electoral system that is changing the numbers in the Liberal favour.

Sorry Bud, it’s not.

It is part and parcel of our First Past the Post (FPTP) system of electing representatives.

I have no doubts that if I offered to change the electoral system in Ontario to a Proportional Representation system or a Ranked Ballot my new friend would throw a fit.  For some reason most PC supporters have a blind allegiance to the FPTP system that we’ve used for the last, well who knows how long we’ve used it.  It’s the system we know, it’s the system that some of us love and some of us hate.

The conversation that I walked in on was about the recent polling numbers showing a lead for the Liberals and my friend was saying that there was something going on.  The seat count, in his opinion should be the same.  I pointed out that the ridings in Ontario were the same as the ones that put the Harper Party into power in Ottawa in 2011.  He doesn’t believe this.

Since the last seat assessment in 2005, Ontario has had 106 seats in Ottawa, but when the redistribution occurred, the Provincial government of the day opted to maintain the same number of seats in Northern Ontario which lost one seat Federally due to declining population density in the North.

So basically, the counts for the rest of the ridings are about the same as for the 2011 National Election.

What my new friend can’t see, or refuses to see is that in order to win a riding, a candidate does not need to win 50%+1 of the vote, a candidate needs to carry just one more vote than his or her nearest competitor.

FPTP.

I doubt that it would ever happen, but if a constituency consists of 100,000 people (all voters in this case) you could win your riding with 33,334 votes.

That’s 33.334% of the vote.  Most people would call that 1/3^rd.

Here’s how it works.  Just about every riding in Ontario will have at least 3 candidates on the ballot, one from each of the major parties.  Some ridings will have more, but let’s just ignore them for the time being.  When Election Day rolls around, the three candidates in this imaginary riding are in a dead heat.  When the ballots are finally counted, Candidate A has 33,333 votes, Candidate B also has 33,333 votes, and Candidate C wins the day with a whopping 33,334 votes.

Now this is the extreme case, but it has happened that elections have been decided by differences in the double digits. I think the closest race in 2011’s National Election was 26 votes.

If this imaginary scenario happened across Ontario, we could have a party theoretically sweep every seat in an election with nowhere near the majority of the vote.  This is what the supporters of Proportional Representation are going on about.  And they are right.

The thing in Ontario is that if you can win the seats close to Queen’s Park, say within a one hour drive of QP, you don’t need to win another seat to take a majority.  The population density in the Toronto/GTA/Hamilton region is enough to carry the day.

Any you only need to win them by one vote.

Taken to another extreme, if a party wins those seats close to Queen’s Park in squeakers and another party romps through the balance of the remaining constituencies we could (again in theory) have a majority government that came in second place in the popular vote.

Is this fair?  It must be, it’s what the rules allow.

Is Ontario special in this regard?  No, not really.  A number of provinces have “vote rich” major cities and if you can carry the seats in the biggest city and a good chunk of the second largest you’ll likely rule the roost in those provinces as well.

***

I’m no fan of Tim Hudak.  I remember when he sat on the government side in Queen’s Park.  When the ruling PCs sold off our assets to pay for their plans and in the case of Ontario Hydro, they just left the debts owed in a drawer for someone else to deal with later.

That debt repayment that you see on your electric bill each month?  That was Mike Harris and Tim Hudak that saddled us with that.

The other two leaders leave me cold as well.  Sorry folks, just the way it is.

I won’t tell you who to vote for, I’m not sure who I’m going to vote for.  I won’t even tell you who to vote against, that’s a decision you get to make for yourself too.

***

We’re closing in on Election Day.  I want you to think about one other thing.  There are people who are fighting for the ability to vote, there are people dying because they want to vote, get your butt out there and do those people proud and cast your vote.

Don’t like any of the candidates or any of the parties?  Go to the polling station and decline your ballot.  Or take your ballot and spoil it.  This tells the powers that be that you bothered to voice your opinion on them and their policies.  Staying home tells them that you are either too lazy to bother or that you just don’t care.

Thus endeth the sermon,

Peace

BC

Supreme Court of Canada VS Democracy

Well the Supreme Court of Canada heard the arguments and had their deliberations and reached a verdict…

And Ted Opitz retains his seat.

I think this is a bad ruling.  I am not alone.

This is not a partisan issue, but it could be in the future. 

It is a responsibility issue. 

Voting is not democracy, it is only a part of it.  But it is the only part that many people take part in.  The fact that ballots were cast without proper records kept is troubling.

Most of us take the Voter Card with us when we go to vote simply because it says to on the card.  Some of us forget our cards, some of us don’t have a card because we moved recently and didn’t have an opportunity to get the new card before the election and that is why there are provisions in place to handle these instances.

If I were to show up at the polls without my card and without enough documentation to show who I am, I can still vote if someone verifies who I am. 

“I know Bear Cat, he lives down the street from me. Here’s my documentation to show who I am, I’ll sign for him.”

This document is my proof.  It is a government document and should be treated as such.  If the document is lost, or not filled out properly then should my vote count?

The Court says yes.  I say no.

Simply put, the number of ballots in the box should equal the number of people stroked off the list plus any documents for people who weren’t on the list but were eligible to vote at that poll.

And the documents must be complete.

It is not that hard, and yet with our Elections Canada staff and scrutineers from the parties there it still happened.

I’m not calling for anything as severe as some of the legislation in the US where you cannot vote unless you provide proper documentation.  These laws are so strict that voters can be denied simply because they do not drive.  Let’s face it, besides our driver’s licence most of us don’t have enough Government Issue documentation to prove who we are.

Our system is simple and it works if it is applied properly.  In this case there was a breakdown and Elections Canada cannot show that every ballot cast was proper.  This leaves an opening for abuse and hindsight being what it is, if there is an opportunity for abuse, abuse will occur.

If this had happened during a “normal” election where the plurality is usually in the hundreds if not thousands, this would not be such an issue… But it still would be an issue.

Boris Wrzesnewskyj’s challenge to the results of the past federal election in Etobicoke was because the number of disputed ballots was greater than the plurality, the number of votes that decided the election in that riding.  Ted Opitz countered that overturning the result would disenfranchise voters, telling them that their vote didn’t count.

We do not know who the disputed ballots were for.  We do not know if they were all for one candidate or another.  But we do not know that they weren’t either.  We don’t know if these people voted twice, or were entitled to vote at all.

The Supreme Court of Canada had an opportunity to tell Canadians that their vote is important, that the rules in place are good.  They chose not to.

Four votes to Three.  The right of a citizen to vote is more important than the determination of whether an individual is entitled to vote.

At the very root of this it is not a Wrzesnewskyj vs Opitz matter or even a Liberal vs Harper Party matter.  It is about our faith in the system and that Elections Canada must show that they are capable of handling a proper election.

It appears that Elections Canada may not be capable… But the Supreme Court of Canada saved their bacon.

Afterthought… In a post ruling photo-op with Ted Opitz, Stephen Harper said something about improving our election system.  Why does this scare me?

Happy Hallowe’en, BC

The Supreme Court of Canada and the Etobicoke Election

The lawyers have had their say, the Justices listened and asked questions, and in the end the Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada decided to reserve their judgement.

I don’t blame them.  This is an important ruling and they need to be sure it is right.

From what I have read it boils down to a simple question.  Ted Opitz’s lawyer is saying that it is a simple clerical error and the election should not be overturned because a clerk didn’t record a person’s name in a book and Borys Wrzesnewskyj’s saying that the rules were not followed properly and those votes cannot stand.

Each side is arguing over the same coin by showing its two sides.

Opitz’s camp is saying that overturning the election “disenfranchises” the people who voted properly and supported the Harper Party Candidate.  Wrzesnewskyj’s side is saying that not overturning the result “disenfranchises” those who voted for the Liberal Candidate.

And both arguments are based on the clerks not recording the information properly.  Funny old world isn’t it?

My take is that as long as there are more disputed votes than the number of votes separating the two candidates, we need a new vote.

There were 79 votes disqualified, 52 were due to the fact that the original Judge could not determine whether they were registered to vote or not.  Of those 52, Elections Canada has determined 44 were registered.  That leaves 8.  Add those 8 to the 27 disallowed for other reasons and we are still over the 26 vote difference.

What does that mean to me?  That the representative for the 100,000+ people in that constituency, 52,000+ who voted, is decided by the 35 voters that may or may not be eligible to vote in Etobicoke.

The question becomes is Ted Opitz an MP or do we need to vote again?

We need to vote again.

We sent our Forces to Afghanistan to fight oppression and to give the Afghan people the ability to vote in free and fair elections.

One Hundred and Fifty of our Forces came home in coffins.

Anything less than a new vote is an insult to their memory.

Anything less is a slap in the face of all those who served over there.

We cannot reach into the ballot box and remove the ineligible votes.  The secret ballot is a linchpin in our Democracy, the only other option is to vote again and get it right.

Frankly I’m saddened by the fact that the Harper Party chose this path, rather than respect the court’s decision and just call a byelection.

I would suggest that the Harper Party, rather than chasing this rabbit, they should show Canadians that they are serious about elections.  I think they should propose a law that punishes those who interfere with the right of others to vote.  Further, any Party that condones these actions should be stripped of Official Party Status and their bankroll should be deposited into the General Revenue of Canada and that any tax refunds for donations to that party be disqualified.

Maybe that would encourage everyone to do the right thing, and make sure their people are doing the right thing as well.  Poutine anyone?

Elections Canada needs to clean up their act.  I realize that these EC officials (Poll Clerks) are only hired for one day every four years or so but they need to know how to do their job.  Each party is allowed scrutineers at the polls as well.  They should be taught so that if they see something like this occurring that it is addressed then and not months later.  They need to know the rules just as much as the EC officials.

Until then, we can only wait and see what the Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada decide.

I hope it is a decision we can live with, because we will have to.