Strategic voting — what’s a voter to do?

Here are my remarks (although I tweaked a bit as I was going along).

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Remarks to CAPP Waterloo Chapter debate on strategic voting – May 12, 2010

Thanks to CAPP, Fair Vote and Civis Mundi for organizing tonight’s debate and inviting me to speak. I am also a member of CAPP Toronto and Fair Vote Canada. By day, I work as a computer geek for the province of Ontario. I am non-partisan although I’ve voted for the same party federally in every election. Unsuccessfully in every case I might add which means that I’ve never had local representation in Ottawa. I’ve worked on a number of federal campaigns which means I’ve never been to a victory party in my riding either. I have voted strategically twice provincially in order to try and defeat the Harris government. Remember them? We’re still paying the price for their election and anti-democratic policies.

Wikipedia defines strategic voting as follows

“Tactical voting (or strategic voting) occurs, in elections with more than two viable candidates, when a voter supports a candidate other than his or her sincere preference in order to prevent an undesirable outcome.”

The implication is that in every Canadian election, some voters vote for their 2^nd choice to prevent their 3^rd choice from winning. There are a variety of reasons which might include policies they disagree with, an incumbent who has not delivered or a party leader they despise. Strategic voting impacts all parties, not just the governing party and at various times and places, is encouraged and denounced by political parties.

I am not here to advocate SV as some new religion or as the be all and end all for every election. My interest is in defeating the Harper Conservatives in the next federal election.

The purpose of the Catch 22 campaign is to point anti-Conservative voters in the right direction by identifying the candidate with the best chance to defeat a Conservative incumbent in order to deny Harper another minority government. We aim to do this by communicating with voters before the next election is called. Targeting ridings and votersand communicating before an election is what makes Catch 22 strategic. The element known as strategic voting is just one component of our campaign. More on that later.

Why bother? What is the undesirable outcome that outweighs, or gives cause to vote for one’s second choice? Why not just let the chips fall where they will? Well, desperate times call for desperate measures. We are dealing with a government that is leading our country down the wrong path with an extremist, authoritarian and anti-democratic agenda and actions. There have got to be consequences for their anti-democratic behavior and other retrograde policies. We’ve seen the damage that the Cons have wrought with just a minority. They’ve simply got to be stopped.

But what’s a voter to do? Since the early 20^th century when Canada moved away from a two-party system, first past the post has been about finessing three and four way splits into winning seats because it’s the person with the most votes who wins. A majority is not required. The party that wins the most ridings gets first dibs on forming a government. Again, a majority of voters or seats is not required to gain power.

How is this done? While there are a lot of good people who enter politics, elections have become cynical exercises in manipulation with a focus on swing voters in swing ridings using wedge issues, negative attack ads and sound bites. Issues of substance are often obfuscated, simplified, and distortions are repeated over and over with the hope that it will become ‘common wisdom’ – DRILL BABY DRILL or ALL TAXES ARE BAD.

Every party finesses when it’s in their interest and warns against vote splitting when it’s not. What gets ignored is the fact that a generalelection is really 308 separate races. Universal calls by parties to “vote strategically” based on national polls is self-serving and not in any way strategic. It is about them winning – period. These calls often play on the relatively low level of political literacy among voters. In fact, many Canadians believe that governments have the support of more than half the voters. This has not happened since 1984.

The behavior of parties and politicians, both in their promises and their performance, has resulted in a deep cynicism and mistrust of all politicians and parties, simmering anger, thirst for reform and has contributed to the decline in voter turnout.

Can we rely on the political parties to stop the Conservatives in the next election? I don’t think so. Let’s face it. The interests of political parties are not the same as those of the voters. The main goal of a party is to improve their own position even if that means electing a right wing government. In my opinion, and I may be proven wrong, there will be no pre-election opposition coalition built on negotiation and compromise. The fratricidal relations between parties, particularly the Liberals and NDP does not lend itself to pre-election compromise. The Liberals will claim to be the strategic choice because they’re second in the polls. The NDP will tell you that there are absolutely no policy differences between the Libs and Cons. It’s politics as usual.

The fact that no party in recent history has moved away from first past the post to usher in truly representative democracy is proof enough for me that the parties put their interests above those of the voters. While internal party rules require that candidates and leaders get a majority, voters do not have the same democratic rights. In other words, our first past the post, winner take all system does not lend itself to sincere voting. 50% +1only applies to ridings, not to voters.

I hate to say it but the opposition parties seem quite comfortable with Harper at the helm. While they may disagree on policy, they have no desire to rock the boat and bring in democratic voting.

So while opponents of strategic voting will often urge voters not to compromise their principles, the reality is that politics is known as the art of compromise. Except that it’s only the parties, and not the voters who are supposed to participate. That’s a double standard.

Less than 2% of Canadians belong to a political party. Voters are viewed as mere vassals who are regularly taken for granted and expected to blindly support whatever their party of choice does. When we demand that they not compromise on matters of principle, we are often lectured about being unrealistic and naïve. But parties compromise all the time. They do so internally during policy and platform formulation, leadership races and candidate nominations. And they compromise in Parliament. And so they should at times.

While there was a half-hearted attempt to form an opposition coalition in 2008, Harper outmaneuvered the opposition with cries of treason and sedition. Yet, each of the 3 opposition parties has now compromised with Harper at one or more times in order to keep his government afloat.

So what’s the principle? Politicians and parties can compromise but voters must not? Sorry, I don’t buy it.

Among voters, each party has a loyal core of voters who would rather sit at home than vote for any other party. As fellow voter, I respect the right of all voters to even if I disagree with their choices. The Catch 22 campaign aims to appeal to undecided voters, new voters, swing voters, former abstainers, soft party supporters and Conservatives voters from 2008 who regret their choice. We respect the right of each party to campaign and believe that both Kitchener ridings (in the top five lowest margins in Canada) and the other 28 ridings we’ve identified, can be won without making any demands on the parties for coalitions or to not run candidates.

In conclusion, the Catch 22 campaign is strategic because 1) it targets winnable ridings, 2) it proposes that the best way for a 3rd Party campaign to influence voters is to communicate before an election and 3) it provides voters with the information they need to know to defeat their Conservative incumbent.

Until Canada develops a democratic voting system with equal and effective votes, voters will turn to schemes like strategic voting. Of course, strategic voting can occur under any voting system but bringing in proportional representation will go a long way to minimizing that and revitalizing politics in Canada.

In the meantime, to be aloof about the dangers posed by the Harper government is irresponsible. The stakes are just too high to maintain a pure, ideological position. The Conservatives have got to go.