Vote y'all!

It's election day. I feel a bit funny voting in an election for a government that I won't be paying taxes to or living under. I will be doing it despite that because it is important to exercise my rights while I still have them. Soon I will be living under a government I have no say over. If you have the right to vote you also have the responsibility to go out and do it. Even if you don't agree with me you need to get off your bum, go out there and be heard.

This time around I don't really like anyone, but I'm also pretty sure that I really dislike the conservatives. I feel like a conservative majority would mean all kinds of bad things for Canada and will move it further away from being the country I can run home to if things go sour down south, and from which I can be proud to claim my heritage. I really like being able to say "I'm Canadian" and following the statement up with all the things I think we're doing right. I get the distinct impression that if the conservatives come to full power they will spend all their time undoing all the progress I feel we've made in the past several decades (same-sex marriage, not fighting in Iraq, legalized abortion, universal health care).

The only reason the conservatives are in charge in the first place is because the other parties are splitting the vote. If you're right-leaning your choice is simple as there's only one party to vote for. If you swing left there's several choices. There's far more lefties in this country that are voting, but we're divided and screwing things up for ourselves and letting the right win. This site: http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/ that lets you look at the polls in your area and figure out which opposition candidate has the greatest chance of winning. My area looks like it might swing NDP, and as much as I'm not really an NDP supporter and have never even considered voting that way in the past, I think that's where my vote is going to go this time around. If I was really passionate about one party or the other I wouldn't be swayed by a site like this, but since I don't really care who wins as long as it is NOT Harper I really appreciate a site that can help me cast my vote strategically. If you too are a lost leftie please check out the site for some guidance.

I'm also really annoyed by the conservative representative in our area. He's younger than I am, loves sending out newsletters to everyone tooting his own horn when he hasn't really done anything, killing all kinds of trees and cluttering up my recycler in the process. So this time around I don't just have it out for Harper, no, my fight is a little closer to home.

To the polling station my friends! Speak up and be heard!

In other news we've already been invited to an election party down South. This should be fun :)

Anonymous comments disabled

It irks me when people feel like they have a right to wander over to my journal and criticize something I've said or done without having the courage to identify themselves.

People certainly have the right to an opinion, and they have a right to share it with me. I had allowed anonymous posting for a while because I wanted to be able to hear from certain family members who read but aren't registered users. But you know what... the reason I like livejournal is the interactive nature of it. It's long been my policy that I refuse to read journals that do not allow comments. If I wanted to read something I can't interact with I'd pick a book over someone's blog. It's already been screened for quality and I know what the subject will be, and that I'm interested in it before I start. Also, if you don't care enough about your readers to let them interact with you, then why should we care enough to be an audience, why should we care to read what you have to say? If you want to operate in a vacuum you're welcome to it.

The anonymous blog comment is a bit like walking out of the room or hanging up the phone when you've said your piece. Sure, I can respond to it, but there's nothing satisfying about standing in an empty room talking to myself or about posting a reply that the other person will never see. Even if you're not doing it to try and get the last word, the end result is still shutting down the lines of communication.

In future, if you want to comment, get an account and sign in to it.