rabble.ca Canadian federal election blog

On Fear, Cynicism and Politics on the ‘Net

by Vicky Smallman

The other night a friend of mine got a call from a Liberal campaign office (according to his call display, that is).  He was screening and didn’t want to talk to them, so he didn’t pick up.  The caller left a voice mail identifying himself as a voter in a neighbouring riding (not a Liberal campaign worker); he’d heard that my friend was frustrated that his NDP vote might not make a difference in his riding, and suggested they both visit the advance polls that evening - he’d vote for the incumbent NDP candidate in his riding and my friend could vote for the Liberal candidate and help stop the scary Conservative incumbent where he lives.  The caller left his cell and asked him to call back..  

My friend, who I guess hadn’t heard of the vote-swapping schemes currently circulating the internet, calls it “a new low”.   To me, it’s just another of the many cynical and desperate tactics that have shaped this election.   

Perhaps it is reflective of my current reality, home every evening with my toddler while my partner’s in school.  Unable to attend evening events and debates, or talk to people on the ground while canvassing for my candidate, my perspective on the election is largely driven by what I’m reading on the Internet.  And much of what I’m reading (this blog excepted, of course!) is nasty, petty, and has very little to do with the policies and issues at stake.

The first part of the campaign seemed to be dominated by a series of “gotcha” revelations about candidates’ past indiscretions… bloggers and other folks with plenty of time on their hands searching through YouTube and other sites looking for interesting tidbits to help reveal gaps in the credibility of other parties.  Some of the gaffes may have been worth exploiting - say, Gerry Ritz’s astoundingly insensitive jokes about the listeriosis outbreak.  As for some of the others… I’m not quite so sure what, if anything, was achieved, except to render the general public even more cynical about politics and politicians.  Now that’s what I call a victory for democracy.

The parties seem to have cottoned on to the fact that the internet can actually be useful as a campaign tool.  There are a host of blogging aggregate sites for political tastes of all kinds, and more of a coordinated effort to use “grassroots” voices to help spread the parties’ messages.  Facebook groups and pages supporting campaigns and candidates abound.  The NDP’s Orange Room provides supporters with a way of sharing content and uploading their own creative campaign efforts so it can be distributed by others.  Both the Liberals and the Conservatives have sites dedicated to exposing the shortcomings of their opponents.  

Like any tool, the internet can be used for the purposes of good or not-so-good… and there is a lot of good stuff out there.  The rise of user-generated content - YouTube in particular - has yielded some amazing grassroots initiatives.  Take the efforts of cultural workers across Canada to expose the dangers of Harper’s changes in arts funding and promote the value of arts and culture.  A scan through this blog’s archives will offer up some of the best examples of political self-expression.  

But one of the drawbacks of having access to too much information is that sometimes it’s hard to filter the good from the bad, the helpful from the distracting.  Take the less overtly partisan efforts calling for strategic voting - we have Danny William’s “ABC” movement , the Vote for environment folks , an online entity called Avaaz . , and of course the myriad of vote-swapping and strategic voting schemes being touted on Facebook and elsewhere.  Well-intentioned, perhaps, but (as many writers on this blog have pointed out) misguided.  

And then there’s the polling.  Daily poll upon daily poll, with very little info about how to distinguish between them or interpret them properly.   

What all of this does is encourage people to be armchair strategists, thinking they can influence the national outcome with their one vote in their one riding.  Unfortunately, our first-past-the-post system doesn’t really work like that.  It’s not about picking a winner (or in the case of the strategic voters, picking a loser) it’s about voting for who you want to represent you in your riding.   Or at least, it should be.  

What the glut of information seems to be doing is providing very effective fertilizer to the culture of fear and cynicism driving Canadian politics today.   What seems to be lost in all of this talk about strategic voting is why we are so preoccupied with it in the first place.  To those of us who’ve been calling for a change to our electoral system for ages, it’s a no-brainer.   But I have to wonder … where were all these frustrated people when we were trying to change the voting system in Ontario?  And BC?  What’s it going to take for them to finally get it?