mike watkins dot ca : May 11 2011 Archives

May 11 2011

Dear 16 year old Me

One bad sunburn before you are 18 doubles your chance of developing melanoma...

This is a very powerful video. I'm showing it to my children, tonight.

PC Party Confusion

A word association test: If handed a federal election ballot that displays a candidate's name beside the "PC Party" label - what do you make of that?

  • Some may mistakenly believe the candidate represents Stephen Harper's party due to long association between the contraction "PC Party" and the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.
  • If one lives in a province where "PC Party" (Progressive Conservative) candidates are fielded in provincial contests, a vote may well be mistakenly cast for a PC Party candidate instead of a Conservative due to confusion [1]
  • An unknown but very small percentage of electors will look at the "PC Party" label with curiosity, remember the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada went the way of the dodo bird, and cast a vote for the "PC Party" anyway, believing that the party of Mulroney and Clark somehow came back to life.
  • An infinitesimally small percentage of electors will correctly identify "PC Party" as the Elections Canada approved contraction for Progressive Canadian Party and choose to cast a ballot for the party's candidate.

The Progressive Canadian Party was formed in direct response to the merger of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada with the Canadian Alliance. The founders of the party hold that the merger of their former party was either inappropriate, illegal, or represented a takeover of the true Tory party by the upstart western Reformers. A tenet the party holds dear is the claim that they, not Harper's Conservatives, represent an unbroken conservative political lineage reaching back to the days of Sir John A. MacDonald.

Thanks to a decision by Elections Canada back when the party was founded, the Progressive Canadian Party is permitted to identify itself as "PC Party" on federal ballots.

The decision by Elections Canada allowing the party to be labelled as "PC Party" on ballots was a poor decision seven years ago and represents something of an outrage today.

We aren't talking a large number of votes that may have been miscast, but as a democrat first and foremost I believe in the value of every single vote. Allowing the label "PC Party" to stand beside Progressive Canadian candidates only serves to confuse [2] some of the electorate and as a result votes are being miscast. Even one miscast vote is a shame.

Is Elections Canada not aiding and abetting a passive form of electoral fraud? At the very least, does permitting this ongoing confusion [3] contribute to demeaning the value of the vote?

I think it does and therefore urge the Progressive Canadian party to make an application with Elections Canada to be labelled as "Progressive Canadian" or "Progressive Canadian Party" for any future electoral contest. I also urge any elector in one of the ridings the Progressive Canadian party fielded a candidate to write a letter of complaint to Elections Canada requesting an investigation of this matter.

[1]Voting Conservative or conservative? (Evan Careen, High River Times) "I find it concerning because I've had people come up to me in this campaign and say 'You got my vote Ted, I always vote PC,'" he said. "I tell them that we haven't been the PCs for a long time but a lot of people still refer to the Conservative party in that way."
[2]Candidate's party name confusing, incumbent says (Enrique Massot, Cochrane Eagle) Ted Menzies, candidate for the Conservative Party of Canada, said ballots for a candidate representing the Progressive Canadian Party are represented in such a way that voters could mistakenly identify as the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta.
[3]Macleod constituents confused by ballots (CTV Calgary) Voters in the Macleod riding, just south of Calgary, will have to be careful when marking their ballots. Some constituents, who voted in the advanced polls, have complained that they were confused by the two conservative candidates running in the riding. Some say that confusion caused them to vote for the wrong one.