Do the math

I woke up this morning ranting and raving.  There was a by-election in Victoria yesterday to replace a federal Member of Parliament who resigned for health reasons.  The result of the by-election was essentially no change.  The NDP MP resigned and the NDP candidate was re-elected.  So why am I so mad?

I'll tell you why.  The second in line was the Green Party candidate, with  34% of the vote.  He trailed by less than 3% of the popular vote.  I support the Green Party and everything they stand for.  I was happy that the Green Party candidate got such a good percentage of the vote.  Maybe in the next general election the Greens will even elect another candidate.

BUT-- this by-election drove home the fact that here in Canada we have one right-wing party, the Conservatives, who are now forming a majority government with less than 30% of the popular vote.  Why does this happen?

Because the left is splintered into three parties, the Liberals, the NDP and now the Greens.  This means that the left leaning voters have three choices and the right wing supporters have one.  Do the math!  No matter how good the Greens are, no matter how good the NDP or the Liberals are, unless  there is some kind of merger or coalition, the Conservatives with the Dictator Stephen Harper will continue to win elections.

In Victoria we did elect another NDP candidate and that's good.  He won with 37% of the voters, followed by the Greens with 34%.  The Conservative candidate got 14%--yet that's the party that is in complete control in Canada.  It has only 14% of the vote.  Well, 14% of those that cast a ballot.  In Victoria that was 43%.  So less than 7% of people in Victoria support the Harper Government.  That's disgusting.

Something's wrong with our system when this keeps happening again and again. Unless the Liberals and the NDP merge this travesty will continue. We need proportional representation in this country.  It just doesn't work with the left vote divided three ways.  Do the math.