voting out of fear

I cannot actually remember if Adriane Carr said the following or if I just distilled what she said into this simple message which is, “Vote out of hope, not out of fear.” Carr either said that exactly or something that could be distilled down to that simple, and powerful sentence. Carr was answering a question about strategic voting. It is not possible for Ms. Carr to tell people to vote strategically in Vancouver Centre; if she were to encourage strategic voting she would be asking people not to vote for her. I like Carr’s approach, and I think that it is a basic and fundamental part of democracy that you should vote for someone or a party that you want, not simply against the worst party or person out there.

While I would like to vote out of hope, and I have done so in the past, I am going to vote out of fear. It is our unfair electoral system that requires many voters to cast ballots out of fear. Some day I hope that we will adopt a more fair electoral system so that strategic voting to stop the worst party or person is no longer necessary, but as of right now, and more importantly as of 7am tomorrow when I go to vote, the system we are stuck with requires that I vote out of fear.

In 2006 I voted more out of hope than fear. I voted for the NDP (I say the NDP and not Svend Robinson because I was unhappy to be voting for Svend but I had no choice if I wished to support the NDP). In 2006, as is the case now, one of the top issues for me was electoral reform. The NDP officially supports some sort of electoral reform, though they rarely make an issue out of it during elections. The Green Party also supports electoral reform, and Elizabeth May and Adriane Carr have mentioned the need for electoral reform. It is unfortunate that the issue never seriously gets discussed during campaigns. So much voter apathy could be cured with a more fair electoral system. I am getting off track here, but my originally point was supposed to be that in 2006 I felt I could still afford to vote out of hope, but now in 2008 after two and a half years of Conservative government, I no longer feel that I can vote out of hope. Stephen Harper’s vision for Canada is too scary to take any chances with.

Lots of people have tried to convince me that it is still okay for me to vote NDP in Vancouver Centre as it is mainly a race between the NDP and the Liberals. I think that it is important to vote Liberal in Vancouver Centre if you want to stop Harper because we need as many Liberal MPs as possible. There is still an outside chance that the Liberals could win close to the same number of seats as the Conservatives. Even if the Liberals lose some seats, it is important for their numbers to be strong so that they still appear to be a government in waiting, and not the drained and wasted political party that they are appearing to be these days. Jack Layton may think that the NDP is a viable alternative to the Conservatives but his numbers do not support this. It is still only the Liberals, of the progressive minded parties, who have the strength in Ontario and Quebec to win enough seats to form a government.

Regardless of Liberal seat totals I am not inclined to vote NDP this time around anyway. From what I have heard from Michael Byers this campaign I do not like him much. He refers far too often to his human rights work abroad and says little about what he intends to do for human rights in Canada. He mentions his books and writing for The Globe and Mail far too often, it comes across as elitist. I am also unhappy with Jack Layton’s opposition to a carbon tax. The NDP continues to focus on big polluters and says that cap and trade is the only viable option to combat climate change. While I agree that we need a cap and trade system, that is no reason to not have a carbon tax. The Liberal position is to implement an immediate carbon tax and then to work with the provinces and other countries to develop a workable cap and trade system. A carbon tax could be implemented quickly and with minimal cost, whereas a cap and trade system would take years to set up.

Ultimately, I would vote for Adriane Carr, the Green Party, and Elizabeth May if I felt I could afford to vote out of hope tomorrow. The Green Party focus on the environment, electoral reform, and solutions (rather than ideology) based politics are things that resonate deeply with me. I hope that enough people vote Green tomorrow to keep them around as a viable fourth party. If they manage to nearly double their vote totals they will get a huge amount of public financing. Public funds amounting to around $2 million per year should allow the Greens to have the structure in place to perform even better in the next federal election. It is possible though, that there are thousands of people like me, who would like to vote Green, but simply feel they cannot because to do so would risk giving Harper another mandate. Hopefully someday, when we have a fair electoral system, we can all vote out of hope.