I am disgusted with politics. The left has been poisoned with group think and the right is batshit crazy. I am NOT going to hold my nose and vote for “the lesser evil.” No way.
The before times
I have voted in every election I was eligible to vote in since I turned 18. I was a staunch NDP supporter (Canada’s left-of-centre party) from the get-go and for more than 30 years. Then things got weird, like they did with the Democrats in the US, and I felt pushed out. (There’s nothing like a public shaming to help you discover your dark side.)
In the 2000s, the Canadian political arena became more polarized, Liberals vs. Conservatives, so I found myself voting “strategically,” to make a difference rather than by what I believe in deep down.
At the moment, I can’t figure out what the strategy is. I can’t support the liberal-left because they think it’s okay for men to compete in women’s sports. I can’t support the liberal-right because they are mean-spirited and lie.
I hate the left because it has become coercive. I should love the verging-on-libertarian right, right? But how can you love dispicability? You’d have to be a minion to do that.
When in doubt, research.
Fortunately, there’s no Canadian tariff on information (yet) and America has amazing resources all about voting, so this past week I turned there for advice.
There’s a lot of great information on this webpage, What every American needs to know about voter turnout.
A lot of people in the US are very concerned about the attack on the validity of elections as a whole and how that discredits democracy itself. If you believe in democracy, then we all need to defend the legitimacy of the voting process, which is, in the US and in Canada, fantastic, no ifs, ands or buts. So many honest people are doing a really good job.
One thing really stood out for me on that web page about voting because it explains to some extent why the electorate is so evenly divided. The problem is uncertainty:
Those motivations [to get out and vote] could vary anywhere from getting personal satisfaction from participating in the democratic process to thinking your vote will make the difference in a particular election. The latter “is a narrower definition of instrumentality,” says Tyson. “What is the likelihood that I am pivotal in this election? If my vote is pivotal for Candidate A, that means [that I think that] half of all voters will vote for Candidate B. [My vote could be the tipping point.] And that means that public opinion is more divided than I thought. So, when my vote ‘matters’ the most, my knowledge that it’s ‘right’ may be the least secure.”
- Melissa Pheterson, quoting Scott Tyson, associate professor of political science at Rochester U. in his explanation of the Riker-Ordeshook theory of the calculus of voting.
The more important I think my vote is, the more I must also think that the electorate is evenly split. This could be called The Voter’s Paradox. The obverse would be: the more certain we are about how “most people” will vote, the more confident we will feel about voting according to our beliefs. People who support a likely winner will feel confident voting for them. And people who don’t support that party will feel more confident voting for the alternative too.
In other words, votes count, just not in the way we think they count. For each of us, what matters is not who wins or loses but that we expressed our beliefs with confidence. We want our votes to count in the sense of being important, and not just counted numerically.

This explains the dilemma I was facing about whether or not to vote. If I thought my vote was going to be critical, then I have to admit that it’s anybody’s race. And I hate that feeling. It’s paralyzing.
Who are you voting for?
Another side of this voting conundrum is about polling. Polls tell you roughly where the candidates stand and undoubtedly affect how people vote.
Recently, studies have shown that another kind of polling is a better predictor of outcomes. If you ask people how they think their neighbours are going to vote, you get a result that turns out to be closer to the actual outcome.
The present times
As for the upcoming Canadian election, a few weeks ago, a lot of people were very excited about Mark Carney, who replaced Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after a certain demagogue called Trudeau “Governor Trudeau” and then launched a tariff war.
Since then, the not-the-51st-state fervour has died down and the Conservatives have rallied in the polls, taking us back to square one, an evenly divided electorate.
The outcome is altogether uncertain, hence my feeling that my vote just might be the tipping point. Carny by one!
But as we all know, that is not how elections work. In Canada, we do not vote for the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is the person who leads the party that wins the most electoral seats. In terms of voting, he’s just one guy running in a local riding like everybody else.
If in doubt, write.
Substackers are fond of reflecting here on their craft. A few months back, many were saying things like that one writes to find out what one thinks. I agree, so I started this post with the intention of figuring out who I think I should vote for. As it turns out there is no one I think I should vote for, so I’m not going to vote.
In my riding (what we call electoral districts in Canada), the outcome of this election is anybody’s guess. The riding was formed only in 2004. There have been six elections since then, and they have flip-flopped between Conservative and Liberal. We had a notable lefty, Howard Hampton, represent us in the provincial government, who became leader of the provincial NDP, but federally, we’ve never gone left, though other northern communities with more unionized labourers have.
Our incumbent is a young Conservative fellow who has no experience and pretty much just tows the party line. The Conservative party is making a lot of noise, like we need a change in government because everything’s broken, but when it comes down to it, they are just meanies who will run around cutting things willy-nilly to make themselves feel important. (Sound familiar?) They’ll spend more money than anybody else would and call it fiscal responsibility. This is a Conservative tradition and it capital S Sucks.
Running against him are two contenders, Liberal and NDP, and a couple of outliers. I can’t stand either of the contenders, and I don’t know the outliers.
The zeitgeist
These two little Notes in Substack make a good pair. Umlaut Man, Žižek, has got it right, I think.
Ms. Brodsky should not be shocked. It makes perfect sense. The madness must stop. And, for me, if it won’t stop, I will stop, firstly by not voting.
There’s gotta be a better way
Lottocracy is a system of putting people in office without voting. You can read about it here: https://democracywithoutelections.org/ I have to read up on it but that is how Greek democracy ended, with lotteries in which anyone could be selected.
China considers itself a democracy because it uses voting systems at different levels up the political food chain. I wish we in the West could stop vilifying China long enough to learn how their government works. It’s pretty cool. Read the “Self-description” part of the Wikipedia page on the Politics of China.
Final word
I am looking forward to watching the election results roll in Monday night. I am hoping Mr. Carney sweeps the election and becomes Prime Minister. He’s the adult in the room, very smart and a calming force. Maybe he can reason liberalism back from the brink of identity politics, giving the country away to people who don’t share our beliefs and way of life, and managerialism.