Attention Albertans: The provincial election is coming up on April 23rd. I know many of you don't care. I know many of you are not from Alberta anyway and therefore have even less reason to care. Please keep reading! Although this is going to be a bit of a political post I am going to try to keep it unbiased and applicable to any election, not just to ours coming up.
Deciding to write a more political post was a bit of a tough decision, because I know that the level of interest in politics among the general public is fairly low. When you look at voter turnout for any election in Canada, it's usually only about 50-60% of all eligible voters. Also, those of you that know me well know that any time there's an election I start harping at everyone to go vote. It's the same old tune. But come on people, 50-60%?!? That's pathetic. I just can't fathom why anyone in their right mind would not want to exercise their right to vote. It's there so that we can be a fair and equal society. People have fought hard for you to have the right to vote an continue to fight so that you can have it. And you can't take the time, which is literally less than 5 minutes, to put an X on a piece of paper and stuff it in a box?
OK, so I'm used to the arguments. Some of you feel like nothing ever seems to change regardless of who wins, so why bother? Some of you don't really know enough about the parties to make an actual decision. Some of you just say you hate politics and therefore don't pay attention to elections. My rebuttal:
1) You don't know enough about the parties: Come on. You know as well as I do that this is kind of a half-assed excuse. The media puts out lots of news stories any election time in an attempt to educate the public about the political platforms. Usually the parties themselves will drop info fliers into your postbox. If you're not informed it's because you have been too lazy to inform yourself. It's the same as anything else in life, you're not going to learn about it unless you actually put in a little bit of effort. Watch a leader's debate, read a paper, use Google... Just inform yourself!
2) You hate politics and find it boring: I can promise you, there is at least one reason why you should care, and that reason will be a personal one. Maybe you should care because you have or are going to have children, and you want to make sure that there are going to be enough schools for them to get a quality education. Or you don't want to have to pay school fees for basic classes at what is supposed to be a public school. Maybe you care about your taxes potentially going up (there is one party that is actually campaigning that they will raise the provincial tax). Maybe you care about having quality, free healthcare and don't want to have to start paying for private healthcare. Maybe you care about the environment and protecting it while still being able to utilize the resources Alberta has access to. Maybe you don't want your tax dollars to pay someone to sit on a committee that has never met a single time (research the "No-meet" committee - it happened!). Maybe you just want things to stay the way they're currently chugging along. No matter which side of the argument you sit on, chances are you have an opinion on at least one of these issues. This is your one opportunity for the next four years to make your voice heard. After this one day, you can go back to ignoring what is going on if you wish, but, in some way or another, regardless of who you are, you will be affected by the decisions these people make.
3) Nothing ever seems to change regardless of who wins: To be fair, the Alberta Conservatives have been in power for something like the last 45 years, so you can't really expect there to have been any major changes in that time span. But, here's the thing: This election is projected to be one of the closest in Alberta's history. We have more of an opportunity this time around to tell the politicians what we really want and to have them listen than ever before. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't vote Conservative, and in fact if you have researched the parties and you agree most with their values, then I think you should do just that. What I am saying is that this time around in particular, but still in any election, your individual vote really matters. You may say it's just one vote, but remember how I said the typical election turnout is typically somewhere around 50-60%? What if the other 50% actually voted? How would that change our political landscape? Minority governments have been formed on less than 50%. You could almost argue that the opinions of that percentage that don't typically vote may actually count more as they are perhaps more likely to want to vote for the smaller parties but feel like their vote is just going to get lost amung those for the more popular parties.
What I am trying to stress is this: I don't really care who you vote for. Well, I do in a way because obviously there's a party I would like to see win, but it's more important to me that you just vote. If the party I like best loses, but I can see that a true majority of Albertans chose the winning party, I can live with that. If my party loses (or really, even if it wins), and it comes back that only half of Albertans actually took the time to vote, then really we have all lost.
Democracy only really works if everyone utilizes their individual voice.
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