Attention all Western Canadians, attention all Conservatives:

I am Torontonian.
I did not vote Conservative.
The fact that the Conservative Party's leader and origins are from the West had absolutely ZERO effect on my choice of whom to vote for.

Let me explain how I decided to vote for a party other than the Conservatives:
I went to the websites of all four parties running candidates in my riding, and I read each party's platform. I compared each party's policy on each issue to all the other parties' policies. For every issue, I decided which party had the best policy, that is the closest to my vision of how Canada should be addressing the issue.

There was not a single issue for which the Conservative Party had the best policy. My reaction when reading the platform ranged from "This is a reasonable policy, but all the other parties have better policies" to "This policy, if implemented, would result in a Canada that I would be ashamed to live in." Even if I did not disagree with a particular Conservative policy, one of the other parties always had a better policy on that particular issue.

As you can see, regionalism had NOTHING to do with my decision not to vote for the Conservatives. It was all about policy. In fact, until these letters started pouring into the nation's op-ed pages, I didn't realize that the Conservatives were considered purveyors of the Western Weltanschauung. I took the Conservative Party to be just that, a conservative party, purveyors of the conservative Weltanschauung. Regionalism was never even a factor.

It isn't about anti-Western sentiment.
It my vote was not intended to slight or spite the West.
It is about policy.
My vote was intended to go to the party whose policies are closest to my vision rather than the party whose policies are furthest from my vision.
My decision about whether to vote Conservative would have been the same if those policies had originated from Jonquiere or Iqualuit or Bonavista or my next door neighbour.

It's all about policies. It is not about regions at all.

PS: If you're going to consider every pronouncement about your party to be a pronouncement about the West, you might want to think about following the lead of your Quebec counterparts and restyling yourselves as the Western Block.

I have an involuntary muscular twitch in my nose!!!!!!

When I went to bed, all was right with the world. Liberals had won a
sizeable minority, NDP held the balance of power. The country was safe, my
job was safe, best possible outcome. When I woke up, it was a bit more
uncertain. NDP was one seat away from balance of power! GAH! I honestly
thought it was all over, that's why I went to bed! At least I got to fall
asleep feeling the most content and satisfied I've ever felt when falling
asleep alone.

I'm still satisfied with the outcome. I think it accurately represents the
sentiments of Canada as a whole, I think the current voting system gave us
an appropriate balance of power this time (with the exception of the
over-represented Bloc), and I think this government will be able to govern
as long as they make a modicum of effort to build consensus and don't let
egos get in the way. I don't know if we can trust Martin to do that, but if
he does he'll be able to govern.

Campaign analysis:

- The Liberals did not run a good campaign at all. If this were a "make a
good election campaign" contest, they would not deserve to win. Because of
Martin's hubris and need to separate himself from Chretien, he did not run
on his record, and when a governing party does not run on their record, it
gives a bad impression. They could have won the swingable right by
emphasizing their economic record, but they didn't. Instead they decided to
run on "fix healthcare". But since they've been in power for the last 10
years, the fact that healthcare needs fixing implies that they broke it.
They could have damaged-controlled the sponsorship scandal by emphasizing it
as a paperwork problem, akin to someone losing a receipt, and promptly
pushed through new, more transparent policies to ensure that every dollar
ever spent is accounted for. But instead they just pinned it on Chretien
and let the public believe that the cost of an entire program landed in
someone's pocket.

- The Conservatives should have started from a more centrist position and
moved further right once they gained the trust of the public. (I hope no
Conservatives are reading this!) I think a Purple Tory (a phrase that badly
needs to be coined!) position that doesn't take much of a stance on social
issues would have won more Red Tory/centrist support without risking much of
the neocon support (who are neocons going to vote for anyway, the NDP?).
They also lost a lot of the "Not The Liberals" support by having candidates
publicly blurt out snippets of their underlying neocon agenda on a weekly
basis.

- The NDP had an excellent platform, but they should have written off Quebec
to the Bloc and kept their mouth shut about the Clarity Act. Many of their
supporters, for example those in areas like Hamilton, are a lot less likely
to dispassionately analyze the intricacies of Quebec politics, instead
thinking "Those guys want to break up Canada! And now the NDP wants to help
them!" I don't think the inheritance tax bought them any friends (and there
were several problems with that plan, but that's for another rant), but
mostly they should have better addressed the issue of strategic voting.
Telling people not to vote strategically would be fruitless, but they could
have pointed out that voting strategically if your riding is already safe is
truly throwing away your vote. If they really wanted to invest in this,
they could have commissioned a riding-by-riding poll, so people would know
if their riding was safe. This would have won them at least two more seats
in Toronto alone.

- The Green Party is not nearly as left-wing as people think. They actually
have some very conservative (note my choice of capitalization) economic
policies. If people actually knew that, they might have gotten more votes.

- Just for fun, the Bloc should pick up some extra cash by running
candidates outside of Quebec. They wouldn't have to campaign or anything
outside of Quebec, just get a name on a ballot. You know it will pick up a
couple of joke/protest votes, and hey, it's $1.75 per vote!

Peeves:

- The timing of the poll closures, leaving us with 10% of the ridings
declared and an hour and a half until more results come in. They should
close Newfoundland at 9:30, Maritimes at 9:00, and the rest of the country
at 8:00 local time. Then everything up to Ontario would come in at once,
and we'd have lots of numbers to keep us amused while the rest of the
country finishes. Alternatively, close everything at, say, 8:00 local time.
It seems to take about half an hour to count enough of the Maritime votes,
then they'd have half an hour for speculation and punditry before the big
numbers come in.

- The side-effects of no media blackouts. I have no problem with lack of
media blackouts, but it does get problematic when Maritime winners use their
"You won and you have name recognition" interview to try to get out the vote
in BC.

- The idea that people didn't vote Conservative because of "fear of the
unknown". I'm sure that many people didn't vote Conservative because of
fear of what they DID know about them. Similarly, any sort of "Wassa
matter, you chicken?" rhetoric surrounding the decision of whom to vote for.
This isn't the appropriate outlet for senseless acts of recklessness, and
there's nothing shameful about voting for what's safest for the country.

- Pundits who equate not being right-wing with anti-West sentiment. Where
does that come from? Do they really think someone hates Alberta just because
they think a national daycare program is a good idea? Would you say a person
is anti-Toronto just because they aren't left-wing? It just comes across as
rhetoric intended to make the West hate the rest of the country.

- The omnipresent idea that the most important thing is that a party does
what they say they're going to do, no matter what it is they say they're
going to do. If someone says they're going to outlaw shoes and they go and
outlaw shoes, that doesn't mean it's a good thing that shoes have been
outlawed, and it doesn't mean that you should vote for them again when they
say they're going to outlaw pants.

- The fact that the English media has not managed to properly communicate to
anglo Canadians that people might vote Bloc for reasons other than being
separatist.

- The seemingly random order in which CBC showed riding results. That must
have been very annoying for those who weren't simultaneously tracking their
favourite ridings online! They should have just cycled through every riding
alphabetically!

Best moments:

- Being congratulated on my l33t ballot-folding skills, and playing with a
cool black and white doggie while its owner went to vote. I always seem to
meet cool doggies whenever I vote.

- Rick Mercer! "Hockey night in Canada for nerds" "It's very important that
the greatest evil DOES NOT win!" "I've never seen a rhinoceros, I think it
would be neat."

- That brief, shining moment when the Marxist-Leninist Party led Mississauga
East-Cooksville.

**smokes a metaphorical cigarette**

Damn, that was a good election!

I did it. I read the platforms, pored over seat projections, analyzed my riding, and went and voted for the party whose vision is closest to mine. I just hope everyone else did the same. I did consider a strategic vote, but every seat projection has my riding safe, so I decided to send a message and $1.75 instead.

Incidently, I did receive a reply from my Liberal candidate, but it came too late. She sent the email at half past midnight last night (bonus points for staying up so late to answer voter emails!) but I was already in bed by then. I didn't get a chance to look at my email before work this morning, and I voted on my way home from work. Delaying answering the email so you have time to give a good answer is totally cool, she's not getting docked any points for that, but it just arrived a couple of hours too late. Luckily, by this point, nothing she could have said would have changed my vote.

Now go vote if you haven't already!

Since election day is tomorrow, a quick reprise of How to Vote (the more detailed version can be found in my May archives):

1. Determine which party you would most like to win in the nation as a whole (The Best Party) and which party you would least like to win in the nation as a whole (The Worst Party).

2. Decide whether it's more important to you that The Best Party win, or that The Worst Party not win.

3. If it's more important that The Best Party win, go vote for The Best Party. If it's more important that The Worst Party not win, read on.

4. Assess voter sentiment in your riding and determine how much of a chance The Worst Party has of taking your riding.

5. If you are comfortable that The Worst Party's chance of taking your riding is sufficiently slim, go vote for The Best Party. If you feel that the risk of The Worst Party taking your riding is too high, read on.

6. Determine which party is most likely to defeat The Worst Party in your riding. Reread their platform, and ask yourself if you can, in good conscience, support them. If you can, in good conscience, support the party most likely to defeat The Worst Party in your riding, go vote for them. If you cannot in good conscience support this party's platform, go vote for the best party.

The Romantic by Barbara Gowdy is the book I would write if I were to write a novel. The only difference would be my characters would have a sense of consequence. It's eerie to pick up a book that's so close to the book that you'd write yourself!

A poll: do you know what the word "attrition" means? (Without looking it
up). Answer in the comments please. I don't need to know what it means,
just if you know what it means.

Irrational petty selfish desire of the day:

I want to be given prizes and treated like I'm special because on Monday I
will be voting in my sixth election and I've only been old enough to vote
for five years.

From the brilliant ideas that will never work file: mortgages where you can
revert to any previous amortization schedule.

Suppose you have a mortgage. Suppose you unexpectedly come into a
significant amount of money, and you promptly to pour it all straight into
the mortgage. Then suppose that shortly after this occurs you lose your job,
and don't have enough money to make your mortgage payments. Under the
current system, I think you can reamortize, or you might be able to
negotiate skipping a payment, but interest would still accrue.

Under the proposed system, you would have the option to return to any of
your previous amortization schedules. You could look at a previous schedule
and say "According to this schedule, I should have paid $75,000 by now. In
reality, I have paid $85,000. According to this schedule, I'm not expected
to have paid $85,000 until five months from now. Therefore, I'm going to
stop making payments for five months." No further interest would accrue over
these five months (because you're all paid up, right on schedule), and after
the five months have passed (giving you time to get a job and get back on
your feet) you'd resume paying according to the previous amortization
schedule as though nothing had happened.

The Globe and Mail has an interesting tool to help you decide whom to vote for.

The only problem with this tool is that each choice represents one party's entire platform on the issue, so it contains several different policy items. When I was doing the quiz, I found that in each platform I agreed with some policy items and disagreed with others. Because of the way the quiz is designed, I had to choose only one platform, even if I disagreed with some of the items therein.

It would better serve the voters if each policy item was listed separately, and you could mark each item as "Agree", "Disagree", "Neutral", "Deal-breaker" or "Deal-maker". Each party would get plus one point for agree and minus one for disagree. Parties that earn a "deal-breaker" are eliminated (unless all parties earn one) and parties that earn a "deal-maker" get your vote (unless more than one party earns one, in which case the number of points will be used to decide). At the end of the quiz you'd see which party deserves your vote, as well as how each party scored on each issue.

The elevator was freshly painted this morning. The smell of paint makes me feel nauseous, so I held my nose as I rode up to my floor. When I got out of the elevator, it occured to me that I should have made it clear to the gentleman who was in the elevator with me that I was holding my nose because of the paint, not because of him.

In honour of one-week-til-election day, my top ten election-related pet peeves:

1. People who vote based on appearances (Oh, he speaks well/Oh, he looks well-groomed) without giving though to matters of policy.

2. A system that does not allow candidates to go off-message, even if it's to answer a voter's questions.

3. The fact that debates are unwatchable. If only they could NOT all talk at once.

4. People who base their strategic votes on national polls instead of riding polls.

5. People who only vote for the candidate that's leading in the polls, regardless of what they stand for, because they think their vote is wasted if it doesn't go to the person who wins.

6. People who vote for the local candidate that they like without even taking into consideration that candidate's party affiliation.

7. Every editorialist and letter-writer who has called me lazy/selfish/self-absorbed/childish/spoiled because members of my peer group don't vote. Yes, I am lazy, selfish, self-absorbed, childish and spoiled, but not because of the voting habits of my peer group! Hell, it isn't even my own voting habits that make me lazy, selfish, self-absorbed, childish and spoiled, or reflect those aspects of my personality.

8. People who don't bother to read parties' platforms and instead vote based on what they assume the platforms are.

9. People who don't consider "Can I, in good conscience, support this party I'm voting for" when casting a strategic vote.

10. The fact that most landlords don't let their tenants put up election signs. Not that I want to put up a sign myself, but it would certainly help evaluate the riding's sentiment.

In GoF, Mrs. Weasley has them eat in the backyard because there just isn't
room for 11 people in their kitchen/dining room. But there are nine people
in the family already! Don't tell me they eat their everyday meals around a
table that's so cramped they can't squeeze an extra two in!

Helpful hint: attempting complicated hair-removal procedures while all your towels are in the wash is not among the greatest ideas in the history of humanity.

Helpful hint: if the Globe and Mail website insists that you register, dump your cookies and your cache and try again. Worked for me.

In the bathrooms at work there are these huge-ass rolls of toilet paper. We've been at this location for eight months, and I've never once seen a toilet paper roll that was less than 1/3 full. This would imply that they change the rolls before they near empty. I wonder what they do with all those part-full toilet paper rolls?

I saw a gentleman on the subway who appeared to have a rather severe facial cancer, which deformed his face. I looked at him. Then I looked away so I wouldn't be staring. Then I glanced briefly in his general direction so I wouldn't appear to be avoiding looking at him. I completely forgot how to not-stare-at-someone-but-not-avoid-looking-at-them!

One problem with debates is that there is a certain segment of the population that is inclined to vote based on which leader presents themselves best on TV, rather than on matters of policy. I'm not saying debates are completely without merit, but it is terribly irksome to hear someone say "I'm going to vote for this guy because he speaks well" with no mention whatsoever of his policies.

Project X by Jim Shepard takes us back into that living hell we're all
trying to forget: grade 8. He shows us, in brutal, life-like detail, the
reality of the poor kids at the bottom of the hierarchy. And he takes this,
with a progression that isn't quite logical (it's grade 8 after all) but
that you can totally see how it happens, to a school shooting. Thankfully,
the shooting isn't shown in much great detail.

It has a first-person narration that lacks complete self-awareness, which is
very interesting, and it's painfully realistic. My only complaint is that
the author has not mastered idiomatic use of the quotative "go". He
overuses it and puts it at the end of quotations instead of the beginning
("I'm tired," he goes.). But apart from this terribly distracting habit,
it's an excellent book (and quick too - under 200 pages)