Bob Jonkman just before casting his ballot at the Kitchener-Conestoga Returning Office (May 28, 2018)
Today is Election Day. If you got a little card in the mail (like the one Bob’s holding) it will tell you where you’ll find your polling station. If you haven’t received one of these you can still vote with proper ID. Even if you aren’t registered to vote.
If you have made a mistake and marked your ballot incorrectly, you may return the incorrectly marked ballot to the election official. The election official will cancel the ballot and reissue you a new ballot. The election official will then write “cancelled” on the back of the ballot. Cancelled ballots are not placed in the ballot box, and are not part of the official results.
Please encourage anyone you know to vote today. (No matter who they want to vote for.)
We’ve been told over and over that we need majority government, as if majority government has ever been good for us. With our unfair First Past The Post voting system, “majority government” enjoy majority power even though they’ve earned their majority with only a minority of votes. What I’ve seen is that such phony majority governments listen to citizens the least. With all the power they don’t ask us, they tell us.
Instead of highlighting the candidate we can actually vote for, the main steam media has focused almost entirely on the party leaders. All too often Canadian voters don’t even know much if anything about the local candidate we can actually vote for– the candidate who is supposed to represent our interests in the legislature. For the big three, the Liberal, PC and NDP parties that almost makes sense, because the local candidates we elect are representing the party’s agenda to us. When it comes time for MPPs to vote on the policy & laws made in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, those MPPs are almost always obliged to vote the way their party dictates.
But the Green Party does politics differently. The way I think representative democracy is supposed to work. Green MPPs votes are never whipped; in fact, Green MPPs are obliged to consider the wishes of their constituents– that is to say the voters whose votes elected them– ahead of the wishes of the party.
With both Liberal and PC Parties in disarray, it’s looking more and more like an NDP Government will be formed out of this mess. Voters inclined to vote conservative or liberal tend not to choose NDP for their second choice. If they’re aware of the fiscally responsible and progressively sound Green Party policies, they may well consider voting for the Green Party Candidate. Especially if they’ve seen any of our fabulous candidates at the debates.
Greens have been talking about making history in this election by electing the first Green Ontario MPP by sending GPO leader Mike Schreiner to represent the citizens of Guelph in Queen’s Park. But there is a much greater chance we will will send many more Green MPPs to the legislature along with Mike. Kitchener Centre’s Stacey Danckert is a real contender, and we have such a great bunch of candidates here, WRGreens candidates have never had a better opportunity to win their election contests.
