The day has come.... It's Civic Election Day here in Edmonton, a D-Day of sorts. (As in Decision Day, not to be confused with the Invasion of Normandy D-Day. Clearly to compare the two.... Well, there is no comparison. I digress, getting back on track shall we?) Today's the day when many Edmontonians will hit the poles to decide on a Mayoral Candidate for the City, a Councillor and Public School Board Trustee. (Both for the particular ward that the voter resides in.)
As in years past, I suspect there will be a low voter turn out. This will aggravate the people in outlining communities who are not permitted to vote in today's election, why because they fall outside of the City voting boundaries. This will perplex Elections Canada as it does in most years, with both Federal and Provincial Elections. While voting is a right, not just a privilege, I also think it's the duty of every Canadian to get out there and vote... Not all do, and I've got a couple theories as to why....
Unacceptable Excuse # 1 - I didn't know what day the Election is/was... Take your fingers outta your ears and pay attention, then you'll know what day the election is. Unacceptable Excuse #2 & 3 - I don't know when or where to vote.... Read the paper, Google it, look in your mailbox - the one attached to your house... Sometimes the powers that be put Election Notices in there and it tells you where your Voter's Poll is and when it's open for voting. If an election was a hockey game/football game/some huge concert, or a way to win free tickets to said events, you'd be tripping over yourself to find out the who, what, where, when and why of it... Be a little more original if you please, these are all examples of a grade 3 excuse... It's right up there with the "my dog ate my homework" excuse. It's straight up laziness on your part.
Now that we've got the "I didn't know" excuses out of the way... Let's get to the ones that actually make a little more sense... Politics are confusing and boring... I agree with both of these statements. For me, I've tried to understand Politics and how they work for years.... I still don't get them... For me, the boring is mutually exclusive with the confusion. Both my parents have political opinions and have tried to explain stuff to me, just whizzed right over my head... I won't lie, and by no means am I stupid. I'd always ask who they were voting for, especially after I became voting age, and they'd always tell me it was "none of my business". When I asked why it was none of my business, I was told it was because they didn't want to sway my vote and that I should vote for whomever I wanted to. To this day I'm still baffled by Political BS. The Colbert Report, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the Rick Mercer Report, I get a chuckle every so often.... I'll admit, some of it still flies right over my head.
Another possible reason people don't vote could be that they figure that all Politicians are crooks. They may figure their vote won't make a difference any how, so why get out there to vote for a Politician that's just going to mess with them anyway. I admit, I do think that most Politicians are crooked, but maybe not for the usual reasons. We know that Politicians are going to lie and promise the voters things that the voters want in order to be elected into office. (The key is to pick the candidate that you think is lying the least, or the candidate that is lying about stuff that's important to you.) What I don't enjoy is the ad campaigns. Sure go talk on the News, have signs or whatever you see fit. What I'm not a fan of is the smearing ads. The ones where one candidate pays for the another candidate to look like a shyster. In my mind, that just makes whomever paid to run the ad like a bigger shyster.
People always come up with excuses not to vote. Fine then, don't. It's your right to vote in this country, as long as your over the age of 18. In my mind, it's also your responsibility to vote.... Even if it's for the Green Party. Wouldn't that be something, if the Green Party won a majority. I'd laugh my head off. I hear all the time, if you don't vote, you have no right to bitch about the government. I agree. And if you don't vote because you don't think your vote will make a difference, that's one way to make absolutelly positive that it won't count. If people put half the effort into voting that they did coming up with excuses as to why they can't... We'd have a 90% turn out rate every time. VOTE ALREADY!
I remember one year, a former friend of mine made a big hairy deal at work about voting. He was adamant that you are supposed to be given something like 2 or 4 hours off work to go vote. He'd make smart ass comments about being allowed to leave early, because work was impeding his right to vote. This continued through out his 8 hour shift, just bitch, bitch, bitch. At the end of it all, he didn't leave early and left at his usual quitting time. Even though he left at his usual time, he still had more than enough time to vote, he didn't out of shear laziness. Some how it got out at work that he didn't vote after making such a big deal out of it, so he just looked bad.
It's not always about me; but my fondness of bitching out ranks my laziness, so I'm getting out there to vote today!
No comments:
Post a Comment