The Essence of Indie: thoughts on yesterday’s by-election
by sarah pearsonYesterday I got to vote. I (and half the Indyish team) live in the Outremont riding, site of the nail-biting race between the Liberal and the NDP candidate. The NDP won. Yay.
For those dear readers who hail not from Canada, yesterday there was a by-election in three ridings in Quebec, in order to fill empty seats in the Canadian House of Commons. For these three ridings, yesterday was a Federal election. The dudes who were voted in will sit in the Canadian Parliament.
This was not the first time I’ve lived in a nail-biter riding. Two years ago (the last Federal Election), I lived in the famous Trinity-Spadina riding in downtown Toronto. It was a duel of epic proportions: the NDP (Canada’s (legitimate) left-leaning party) superstar Olivia Chow vs. Liberal Longtimer Tony Ianno. Chow is married to Jack Layton, the NDP party leader, and was once an amazingly effective city councilor. Tony had been in the riding for years and years, and had deep roots in the community. No one knew who would take the riding - it was an incredible race, one that regularly made national headlines throughout the campaign. Two of my roommates at the time - both members of the Young Liberals - were themselves torn about how to vote. In the end, Chow won. As the daughter of two card-holding NDippers and a big fan of Chow, I was delighted.
So yesterday was a fun day to vote. My roommate Emma - a law student and political nerd - was the perfect polling-station companion. We bundled up in our colourful Fall scarves and strutted down Bernard for some late-night votin’ at école Lambert-Closse. We both get really giddy about the voting process, as we should, and we spent the whole walk over gushing about how much we love makin’ that little ex. “Dammit, we’re exercising our right!” “This is a PRIVILEGE!” “As women especially, we cannot dare take this for granted.” etc. etc. Our other roommate, despite our guilt-trips, chose not to vote. She had a date.
I was delighted to run into Lise at the polling station, also apparently a fan of democracy. What a wonderful place to run into people you know. It’s a good, healthy sign of an active community. I absolutely love people-watching at polling stations - everyone seems that little bit more empowered, and they give off wonderful positive energy. In our climate of political apathy and desensitization to the liberty we enjoy in this country, it’s a political statement just to show up to the damn ballot box. When we’d finished voting, Emma and I did a little “Go-Democracy!” high-five. We were aglow.
I don’t know nearly enough about politics as I would like, and would never claim to “follow” politics. In fact, I had to ask Emma as I was waiting in line to vote, “what’s the NDP guy’s name again?” But I do know enough to form an opinion. The Liberal party is complacent, ineffective and aggravatingly Centralist-by-definition. They stand for nothing, and lack some serious balls. In other words, they represent Canada wonderfully. And that makes me angry at Canada, not the Liberals, for being a spineless, apologetic and grossly apathetic colony that keeps voting the Safe Vote (except when Canada does wonderful things, like overcoming the long-standing heterocentric stereotypes about marriage, allowing all couples to form civil unions should they choose. That sort of thing makes me wanna throw my tuque in the air and do a little Canada-dance.).
So it’s always exciting when the Liberals lose a seat to the NDP. It’s a sign that people want change. That people are moved enough to act for change. To vote for change. Things are stirring in our little Outremont riding. Ripples are a ripplin’.
As an independent artists networking site, we cannot collectively speak loud enough about the importance of voting. Everything we cherish as artists - our little artists spaces, our communities that nourish us, our courage to delve deep into the speakings of our souls - it’s all there in little ex. I guess you could say that democracy is art: it is freedom of expression at the very simplest, emotional, individual level. Let’s protect it.
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Published on: September 18th, 2007
About: sarah pearson
Sarah Pearson is a writer, singer, and player-of-keys based in Montreal. She loves bicycles, old pianos and Ile Sans Fils cafés.
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i gotta say- i don’t always vote - if all the candidates anger or bore me i don’t bother and consider it an objection.
i really agree with this comment about last night:
“People voted, in the case of Outremont, probably for Thomas Mulcair; they didn’t vote for Jack Layton”
Layton rubs me the wrong way, but Mulcair was the strongest environmental vote i felt i could make, given the state of the green party, so i got off my duffer and did the deed, and i hope Ottawa gets the fricken message.
Posted on September 18th, 2007 at 12:36 pm [permalink]
I’m also thrilled to have a national NDPer in Quebec - our one and only at the moment (second in the history of time).
However, I’ve gotta disagree with Sarah’s viewthat democracy - or at least the current canadian version - is “freedom of expression at the very simplest, emotional, individual level.”
I think voting tends to be more deffensive than expressive, especially in Quebec, where every election is hautned by polarizing sovereignty issues. Rather than emotional and individual, it becomes an excersice in population-wide psychoanalysis, where voters aim to jump onto the bandwagon of whatever party can snatch the riding out of the hands of the Bad Guys (who are usually the last government).
In recent electiosn, the media has made much of the fact that Canadians and Quebecers have voted for Change. What they want beyond that is pretty up in the air. There may as well be an “anything but this” box on the ballot.
Nail-biter ridings - or entire nail-biter elections which we have recently witnessed in Quebec, Canada, the US and Mexico - may be great media frenzy fodder, but democracy isn’t supposed to be a freaking action movie. To me, the fact that election results are this unpredictable is a sign that no party is really representing the change that voters want to see.
There are so many ways that democratic systems can actually become more representative and more creative. There’s proportional democracy where parties who get a certain number of votes get a seat in parliament even if they haven’t won majority in any given riding, and there’s preferential voting where voters can rank candidates. Both of these systems allow voters to show their support for less popular candidates without “throwing away their ballot.”
How do we get on this?
Posted on September 18th, 2007 at 1:04 pm [permalink]
“no party is really representing the change that voters want to see.”
holla.
Posted on September 18th, 2007 at 2:27 pm [permalink]
I agree that the “democratic” system is somewhat a sham, and that not voting can often seem like an effective way of protesting bad candidates. I have often caught myself considering “not-voting” and calling it protest rather than apathy. But in the end I always vote - I’ve never missed an election since turning 18 - because it’s just so dangerous a right to take for granted. And by taking that hour of your day and just coming out, I feel the statement you make is much stronger - and contributes more towards a healthier non-shamlike democracy - than abstaining.
Despite all this business about bad candidates, ineffective democracy and defensive voting in quebec, do you not still feel that it is a bold and decisive statement just to leave your darned apartment, get out to the polling station and just vote? I do. I think it’s huge. People are so lazy. If it was only the people who supported the candidates who voted (while those of us who dissagreed with/didn’t care about any of them abstained), then THAT would be some SERIOUS non-representation. Ambivalence, ignorance, or frustration with candidates is no excuse - you still gotta dip your toe in the pond, however murky it may be.
Posted on September 19th, 2007 at 8:45 am [permalink]
sarah, i was glad to see you at the polling stations and am also pleased as punch with the outcome of the election!
my old roommate julia and i used to have voting expeditions much like you described… of course, we’d take it that one step further and invite people over to watch election coverage on the cbc afterwards!
i completely agree that voting is an right to be honoured and always participate myself. i always feel so refreshed when i leave the polling station and walk back home!
Posted on September 20th, 2007 at 6:56 pm [permalink]