Ontario Election

[brianeyci]

Ontario Election thread.

I will point people who haven't made up their minds about proportional representation to this thread.

I watched CBC the other day, and David Smith a Senator came out and said what everybody was afraid of (who says we don't need senators?) He said that if proportional represenatation goes through, loon groups, in particular religious groups which can easily capture 5-6% of the vote will obtain government funding and blackmail minority governments into abortion and anti-gay efforts. None of the mainsteam politicians have taken a stand on proportional representation, partly because it has no chance in hell of passing, but partly because there's no point angering the "silent minority." But I thought people in SDN would like to consider the angle that small, insignificant and puny parties will have funding and power if it passes today (like it will: hell will freeze over before 60% vote for something that hasn't gotten any talk by the candidates at all.)

The best part of this campaign has been faith based schools. Apparently the Conservatives will lose because Ontario doesn't have the stomach for faith schools: a fucking good thing in my opinion. For those who aren't aware, he went from 40 - 50% in the polls down to 30% because he adopted a position for full funding for religious schools. Why American politicians don't go all the way and suggest this is beyond me, but apparently Canadians aren't stupid and don't have a stomach for it. About the only argument for faith schools I've heard is "equity" or "fairness" because Catholics have it, but equality != equity, and if an idea is bad expanding it all in the name of "equity" is absurd.

[Ma Deuce]

I watched CBC the other day, and David Smith a Senator came out and said what everybody was afraid of (who says we don't need senators?) He said that if proportional represenatation goes through, loon groups, in particular religious groups which can easily capture 5-6% of the vote will obtain government funding and blackmail minority governments into abortion and anti-gay efforts

Does this happen in other countries that use MMP, such as New Zealand and Germany?

None of the mainsteam politicians have taken a stand on proportional representation, partly because it has no chance in hell of passing, but partly because there's no point angering the "silent minority."

Actually, McGuinty is the only one still sitting on the fence. John Tory has come out against it, and Howard Hampton supports it.

http://www.thestar.com/OntarioElection/article/264843

The best part of this campaign has been faith based schools. Apparently the Conservatives will lose because Ontario doesn't have the stomach for faith schools: a fucking good thing in my opinion.

Yeah, thanks a bunch for that John Tory! You championed an unpopular cause that you didn't have to, so now we're stuck with one of the most incompetent premiers this side of Bob Rae for another 4 years: Hell, you even did a damn lousy job defending your proposal: Not surprising from the man who approved the infamous '93 "Chretien attack ad".

This election was clearly his to lose. He should resign for this debacle to moment the results are in, but he's already stated that he's sticking around even if his party loses the election. In light of that I'm almost tempted to vote Liberal to make the PCs lose as hard as possible, so that his own party would force him to resign, which would hopefully leave them with a worthwhile party leader next election. It's not like they have any power at all anyway with only half the number of seats as the Liberals.

Why American politicians don't go all the way and suggest this is beyond me

Because Catholic schools aren't already funded as they are here, so it's much harder to justify. Besides, it would also mean funding Muslim schools.

[Aaron]

Does this happen in other countries that use MMP, such as New Zealand and Germany?

Not that I'm aware of but Germany has a very fractured parliament because so many little parties have representation. Everything is decided by deals before hand and things often fall apart. Same deal in Italy though I'm not sure if they use MMP or just have a bunch of little parties to start with.

[aerius]

I still haven't decided if I'm going to vote for any of the parties since they all make me sick. I think I'm just going to vote for keeping the existing system on the referendum and write in Al Bundy for the provincial election.

[Aaron]

I thought writing in a candidate on our ballots made them void in Canada, had I known that I would have done something similar.

[aerius]

I'm pretty sure it voids the ballot, but at least it makes me feel a bit better.

[SCRawl]

I still haven't decided if I'm going to vote for any of the parties since they all make me sick. I think I'm just going to vote for keeping the existing system on the referendum and write in Al Bundy for the provincial election.

I feel (or, rather, felt, having voted last week) your pain. I was stuck: I can't vote for the Tories because of this faith-based stupidity, I can't vote for the NDP because I remember Bob Rae's tenure as Premier, and the Greens are anti-nuclear. I had to hold my nose and vote Liberal, again. Not that it matters; in my riding, the Conservative incumbent is a shoo-in.

[Aaron]

I feel (or, rather, felt, having voted last week) your pain. I was stuck: I can't vote for the Tories because of this faith-based stupidity, I can't vote for the NDP because I remember Bob Rae's tenure as Premier, and the Greens are anti-nuclear. I had to hold my nose and vote Liberal, again. Not that it matters; in my riding, the Conservative incumbent is a shoo-in.

We're pretty much in the same boat. Liberals were the lesser of the evils but the Conservative candidate is basically assured of re-electon up here because we're in redneck heaven. Unless the faith based school issue forces a change, there's a lot of churchs up here but they have pretty dwindling numbers and there's only one faith based school, so maybe we'll get lucky.

[SCRawl]

Oh yeah, the Tories are getting spanked hard over this faith-based funding nonsense.

The MMP is also getting the finger, which is the way I wanted it.

[J]

I voted for the Liberals, and I feel unclean. The choices were a religious fundy supporter, a couple of nutcases, and a lying promise breaking dirtbag. I grudgingly voted for the lesser evil.

As for the referendum, I voted to keep the current election system.

[Solauren]

I voted for 'keep the current system'.
As for political party, I'm not telling :p

[Ma Deuce]

I "threw my vote away" on the local Libertarian candidate, and after much consideration, I finally decided to simply leave the MMP ballot blank.

And look, John Tory has lost in his own riding. I don't see how the fuck he thinks he can continue as party leader. If his own party doesn't throw him out, then there's no hope for them, and that would leave us with just the lying incompetent Liberals, and the insane, even more incompetent NDP.

Hard to believe this is the same party that has governed this province for 75 of the last 100 years.

[Darth Wong]

Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty is a dishonest prick who sold the province a completely bogus bill of goods in order to get elected last time, and then promptly turned around and broke most of his promises. The thing is, the promises he broke were really stupid ones anyway, and breaking them was the right thing to do (although making them in the first place was the wrong thing to do). I actually voted against him in the last election.

Unfortunately, PC leader John Tory is an incompetent fool who has never once demonstrated anything resembling leadership in his time as Opposition leader. Ever since Dalton McGuinty was elected, John Tory has restricted his political activities to attacking McGuinty at every turn, and never really stating his own ideas about anything. He complained that McGuinty has not brought any new power plants on-line in the last 5 years, as if that's really so easy to do. He complained that there are still waiting lists for health-care, as if it would have been feasible to reduce them to zero. In neither case did he explain where all of the money would come from to fix these problems that he constantly railed about in his campaign ads. His only attempt to elucidate a distinctive party platform was his stupid "faith-based schools" idea, which blew up in his face. And then, he compounded his error by immediately flip-flopping in response to public criticism, thus making him look weak and indecisive: critical flaws in the eyes of his core constituency. They should turf his ass out of the party.

And finally, there's the NDP, which has been a lame-duck party in Ontario ever since Bob Rae nearly pushed the entire province into the shitter during his time as Premier.

So I held my nose and voted Liberal. As far as the MMP referendum goes, I spoiled my ballot by writing a bunch of insults for both major parties all over it and refusing to check either option. Spoiled ballots are a time-honoured tradition in France (where spoiled ballots have exceeded 10% of the total in some cases), but they haven't really caught on here. In North America, when people don't feel like voting for any of the available options, they just stay home. Politicians have the luxury of interpreting this as laziness or apathy rather than disgust with the available options. Voters don't seem to realize that they have the option of making their disgust known, by spoiling their ballots.

[brianeyci]

I don't know if MMP in other countries gives extremists power. But even the supporters of MMP concede that it's a possibility and put in a threshold, 3%, to get representation. Then it's just a matter of how many retards there are out there. Are only 3% of people stupid? I don't think so. I think a radical, completely fringe party could get 10% of the vote rather easily, just like the Greens. And then what? Even if they can't blackmail the government, you're giving them power in government. Either they will have power or they won't, and if they don't then there's the question what the fuck are they doing in the legislature in the first place. Opposition parties will one day form a government, like the NDP and Tories. But some fringe group will always be a special interest and never form a government.

There's also the idea that if you don't know where you're going, better to stick with what you've got. It's logically sound to hold your current position rather than take an unknown turn which may be a cliff, and just because it works in other countries it doesn't mean it'll work in Ontario. I would have to see overwhelming proof before dicking around with a system that's worked for Ontario since before I was born.

As for John Tory, what a douchebag. I voted Liberal, and I actually don't feel that dirty about it because I know how politics works and I know that as opposition you have to promise the sky sometimes to get in power because the lowest common denominator are retards. I don't hate him for it because only a fool would've believed his promises, and I don't know anybody who voted Liberal last time because of "The List." All opposition parties make promises they can't keep just because they don't have the same information the government gets from their civil servants, and Dalton just took it to the extreme last time to get in power.

A super majority, what a joke.

[Darth Wong]

All opposition parties make promises they can't keep just because they don't have the same information the government gets from their civil servants, and Dalton just took it to the extreme last time to get in power.

Don't make excuses for him. He didn't need government insider information to know that his list of promises was complete bullshit. Anyone with half a brain knew that his promises were impossible to keep, long before the election. That's why I voted for Ernie Eves last time. McGuinty made promises that he knew were bullshit in an attempt to gain power.

The thing is that it's pointless to harbour resentment over the past, and at this point he's already done his bait-and-switch, so he's not going to do it again. It's hard to find any actions he's taken as Premier where I could have any confidence that John Tory would have done as well or better, particularly given the fact that he consistently fails to show leadership on any issue and his only attempt to do was that idiotic "faith-based schools" fiasco.

[Ma Deuce]

All opposition parties make promises they can't keep just because they don't have the same information the government gets from their civil servants, and Dalton just took it to the extreme last time to get in power.

The opposition doesn't have to lie through their teeth to get elected. Look at Mike Harris: You may not agree with what Harris did as premier (and I'd hazard a guess that you do not), but the fact of the matter is he actually did just about everything he promised to do in his campaign, and he won two back-to-back majorities.

[President Sharky]

What a complete joke of an option John Tory was for this election. I hope he's booted as leader as quickly as possible so the Ontario PCs can get on with having someone with half a brain that doesn't have a consistent track record of running horrendous campaigns that result in total humiliation (Kim Campbell 1993 anyone?).

I'm a pretty committed Conservative, but even I had to think long and hard at the ballot box as to whether or not I would vote for "John Tory's Conservatives" shit-festival. I nearly marked off the Libertarian Party, but in the end I decided that the candidate in my riding was a decent enough man (my city councilor for the past few years) to vote for. Too bad John Tory's douchebaggery meant that he lost in a landslide anyway. Oh well, at least he'll still be my city councilor (on Toronto's asshole-ridden City Council).

Four more years indeed.

[Darth Wong]

I'm not a "committed" anything. I've voted for the PC Party in the past, as well as the Liberal Party. I don't believe in party loyalty. But in this election, I knew how to recognize an idiot when I saw him, and John Tory is an idiot.

[aerius]

I wrote in Homer Simpson for Premier, odds are he'll do a better job than the other incompetants on the ballot. Voted to keep the existing system on the referendum.

4 more years of Dalton McShitty, I feel sick already.

[Darth Wong]

I wrote in Homer Simpson for Premier

How? The party representative ballot was white text on a black background, and the only permitted writing instrument was a black pencil. Only the MMP ballot was writable.

[aerius]

I used my own pencil. The ballot's ruined anyway so it doesn't matter if I used the official pencil or the coloured pencil I happened to have with me.

[Ma Deuce]

Well, voter turnout for this election has hit a new record low at 52.6%, beating the 54.7% set in 1923, this despite measures taken by McGuinty's government designed to boost voter turnout.

Ontario voter turnout a record low

Last Updated: Thursday, October 11, 2007 | 6:55 AM ET

The percentage of eligible voters casting ballots in Wednesday's Ontario election hit an all-time low despite changes introduced in an effort to boost turnout.

Only 52.6 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot, or 4.4 million of 8.4 million possible voters, according to numbers released by Elections Ontario at 6:30 a.m. ET Thursday, when 99.8 per cent of polls had been counted.

The turnout was worse than a previous record low of 54.7 per cent set in 1923. It also fell below the 2003 voter turnout of 56.9 per cent.

Legislation introduced by the previous Liberal government since the 2003 election to boost declining turnout in recent elections did not seem to have the desired effect.

Those changes included:

* Setting a fixed election date.
* Extending the hours and number of days of advanced voting.
* Boosting the number of polling stations.
* Extending polling by one hour on election day.

However, there was a significant gain in voting at advance polls. Elections Ontario reported that 451,949 electors voted at the advance polls this year, up from 356,396 in 2003.

[Darth Wong]

Well, voter turnout for this election has hit a new record low at 52.6%, beating the 54.7% set in 1923, this despite measures taken by McGuinty's government designed to boost voter turnout.

Not surprising. No one could articulate a vision for the future, so there was nothing to vote for. There were only things to vote against.

[Ryan Thunder]

Well, voter turnout for this election has hit a new record low at 52.6%, beating the 54.7% set in 1923, this despite measures taken by McGuinty's government designed to boost voter turnout.

Not surprising. No one could articulate a vision for the future, so there was nothing to vote for. There were only things to vote against.

Indeed. Damn I hate Canadian politics.

I voted in favour of the new system, but it looks like the public was terrorized into voting against it.

None of the mainsteam politicians have taken a stand on proportional representation, partly because it has no chance in hell of passing, but partly because there's no point angering the "silent minority." But I thought people in SDN would like to consider the angle that small, insignificant and puny parties will have funding and power if it passes today (like it will: hell will freeze over before 60% vote for something that hasn't gotten any talk by the candidates at all.)

How would these "small, insignificant, and puny" parties get funding and power that they didn't deserve?