There are two times when it’s appropriate for the average person to make themselves heard in politics: during an election, and between elections.
For all the importance we put on elections, democracy doesn’t only live in the ballot box. It exists in public meetings and casual conversations, in letters and phone calls to your elected representatives, in public protests and boycotts, in expressions of solidarity and charity.
Even if you never cast a vote, it’s your right to make your voice heard, and to ask for accountability of our elected leaders.
But that said, voting is still pretty important.
This has been a strange election, even by the standards of British Columbia, a province that has worked hard to earn its reputation as the weirdo of Canadian politics.
We’ve seen an entire political party deliberately dismantle itself. A party that has been an afterthought for years is running neck and neck with the incumbent government. There are a host of independent candidates, not to mention third party members, in the running.
We have no idea what result we’ll see when the votes are counted after the polls close on Oct. 19. After all the surprises so far, can we rule out another one?
After all, the opinion polls don’t matter. The only result that matters is that the party that gets the most seats wins government.
Here in our little suburban corner of Metro Vancouver, nestled up within the Fraser Valley, things have changed rapidly over the last four years. Ridings have been redrawn. Our populations have grown and changed. We’ve facing challenges and have local needs that weren’t on the radar at all a decade ago.
So if there are issues you care about, and you think one party would be better than the others at addressing them, go vote.
If you think one candidate would do better at representing you in Victoria, go vote.
If don’t like any of the choices on offer, but you think one of them would be at least slightly less bad than the others, go vote.
Votes can be affirmations of support. They can be expressions of your personal beliefs. They can be rotten tomatoes lobbed at your opponents.
It also takes just a few minutes out of your day. So go vote.
– M.C.