Vote, or Else

You know, I had promised myself I wouldn’t write about politics or elections this week. After all, the various levels of political machinations represent only a small portion of the realities of life, although they seem to consume a disproportionately large chunk of media attention. (Throw in sports and Hollywood and you’d be hard pressed to convince any off-world visitor that much else happens on this planet.) But then Gordon Campbell had to go and announce that there wouldn’t be a fall sitting for the B.C. legislature and there was all that ridiculous ballyhoo about not letting the Green Party participate in the federal leaders debate—remember, the Liberals couldn’t get a foot in the door of provincial politics until then-marginalized party leader Gordon Wilson stole the show during the 1991 leaders’ debate . . . and look how all that turned out—so it just seemed the perfect opportunity to introduce Monday’s new election logo, seen here.

Why “Vote or shut up”? Well, it pretty much sums up our simmering discontent with the problematic issue of low voter turnout. While people around the world continue to put their lives literally at risk for the right to vote, we here in ho-hum Canada seem to take our democratic privileges for granted—but then take equally great delight in whining and moaning and complaining about the election results. Granted, as we see time and again in our first-past-the-post system, the government we get doesn’t always reflect the votes we cast, but until the system itself changes (STV, anyone?) there isn’t much we can do about that. What we can do, however, is simply get off our asses and vote.

Take Campbell’s soup of a legislature, for example. Does he honestly expect B.C. voters to believe there is really no reason for the government to sit this fall, what with an election coming up fast in the spring? Let’s see, just off the top of my head I can think up any number of topics the government and opposition could be discussing: aboriginal discontent, a lack of action on the province-wide homelessness crisis, the continuing problems with BC Ferries, the ongoing BC Rail controversy, the snaky (and shaky) transfer of forestry lands into developer hands, the voting gag law, the carbon tax, those pesky pay raises, the floundering of any number of B.C.’s foundational industries . . . the list could go on and on, and I’m not even in government.

Of course, we’re not hearing anything about how the lack of a legislative session is going to translate into any sort of pay decrease. Instead, we get house leader Mike de Jong promising that they’ll be listening to the views of people in their constituencies instead. Hey Mike, guess what? A lot of people in a lot of constituencies have been pretty damn vocal for a while now about how displeased they are with the B.C. Liberals’ practice of favouring the few and the rich over the many and the struggling.

Boil all that down and you’ve got our slogan in a nutshell: Vote or shut up. M