Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Rerun: Deciding where to vote (for students)

The substance of this post is a rerun from 2005.

University students can often swing it so they can vote either in the riding where they're going to school, or in the riding where they grew up/where their parents live/where their "permanent address" is.

Since this election's advance polls are in April (when most people are still at school) and election day itself is in May (when many students are back at their parents', or gone elsewhere for summer jobs) I've decided to post this early so you can decide where to vote and make plans accordingly.

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Where to Vote:

1. If one of the ridings is a really close race, vote in that riding. If both are close, vote in the riding with the closest race. If neither is really close, follow the instructions below.

2. Of the parties running candidates in your riding, decide which one has the best platform that comes closest to meeting your needs and your vision of the country (hereafter the Best Party). Then decide which one has the worst platform that is furthest from meeting your needs and deviates the most from your vision of the country (hereafter the Worst Party). You are judging the parties as a whole, not the individual candidates in your riding. Assess each party individually without regard to possible strategic voting - that comes later.

3. Based on your own needs and your own vision for the country, decide whether it is more important to you that the Best Party win, or that the Worst Party does not win.

4. If it's more important to you that the Best Party win, vote for the Best Party in the riding where the Best Party is least likely to win.

5. If it's more important to you that the Worst Party not win, and the Worst Party has a chance in either of your ridings, vote for the party most likely to defeat the Worst Party in the riding where the Worst Party is most likely to win.

6. If the Worst Party doesn't have a chance in either of your ridings, vote for the Best Party in the riding where the Best Party is least likely to win.

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To determine which party is most likely to win in which riding, check out the Election Prediction Project and DemocraticSPACE. More resources will likely become available as the election progresses. I'm going to be making a Voters' Resources post closer to election day, I just wanted to get this up early so people can make plans.

Update: I'm now collecting links to riding predictors here.

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From Elections Canada:

- Your options for different voting methods (election day, advance polls, special ballot
- How to register to vote in your preferred riding.

1 comment:

Lorraine said...

Political trends in Canada are depressing. Like many progressive USians, I've come to look to Canada for inspiration, if not leadership. But then 'Unite the Right' happened, and the tone of the Harper Government at every turn has been 'Yes, Virginia, we do mean conservative in the US sense.' It seems that what poisons electoral democracy is not so much the Two Party System as the First Past the Post principle, with which Canada is also infected.

If the opposition parties for some reason ever do a 'United the Left,' I hope the name of the resulting party will be The Progressive Party. This is because when I first heard the monicker 'Progressive Conservative,' my first thought was, 'interesting, where I come from it's the progressives vs. the conservatives.'

Strategic voting is neither.