One vote, your vote, my vote — they all matter

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/10/2022 (1426 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Every vote matters. I know this is a cliché, but before you turn the page here, a story:

At the end of 10th grade, while sitting in French class listening to intercom pleas for student-council candidates, a friend suggested I run for Grade 11 president. To an introverted bookworm, he might as well have suggested I jump off the roof and fly.

Yet I agreed, likely because no one else was willing — at least, so I thought, until I found myself running against a popular female classmate after nominations closed.

I had virtually no campaign. When election day arrived, as I glumly ate breakfast in time to catch the school bus to my political doom, my mother (who had noticed my mood) asked who was I going to vote for.

She cut off my mumbled response about why I was voting for the other person. Channelling her inner Spock, she said bluntly: “If you can’t vote for yourself, why should you expect anyone else to vote for you?”

So, I did — and then won the election by a single vote. That life lesson has stayed with me. My vote matters — and so does yours. Even if the candidates are lousy, the parties are manipulative and the system is rigged against real justice, one vote still matters.

My despair with the current system — the dearth of good candidates and the failure of political parties to do what Canada so desperately needs — doesn’t change that fact. To paraphrase my mother, if I don’t care enough to get out and vote for a better future, why should I expect anyone else to care, either?

Some people vote for the candidate they dislike the least. Or, lacking any mind of their own, some vote for the candidate the pollsters say is most likely to win. Others automatically vote for the party they support, whatever dolt is trotted out as its local candidate.

Still others vote for the nostalgia candidate, who absurdly vows to recreate some golden era that likely never existed. Others vote for the candidate who says what people want to hear: they cynically promise both increased services and lower taxes, and then, once elected, spin their inevitable failure as someone else’s fault.

Worse, in this round of municipal elections, we have so-called “freedom” candidates opposed to vaccine mandates or any kind of collective public-health response to pandemics, spouting ideas about disease and social responsibility that a medieval peasant would have instinctively rejected as absurd.

In a democracy of equals, anyone’s individual freedom is limited when it conflicts with the freedom of others — something fascists reject, of course, promoting their personal privileges over the collective good.

In all this confusing whirl of competing perspectives, it’s no wonder voter turnout keeps dropping, with municipal elections claiming the lowest spot. (In Winnipeg, 42.33 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot in the 2018 election.)

This time around, although we have a baseball team of mayoral candidates, some council seats have unfortunately gone uncontested.

And yet, the situation has changed. Things are different. Our election day responsibility to get out of bed and cast our individual vote is more important now than ever.

It really does matter who you vote for, this time, because we are in trouble. All of us.

This next mayor, if they keep the two-term pattern going, will be in office until 2030, the year (we are told) that is forecast as the pivotal point in the history of humanity. Whatever problems we have not fixed or solved by then will haunt future generations of people around the world.

This next council will have the responsibility to work with that new mayor, not against them. We can’t afford to have the same wheel-spinning, posturing, free-for-all that has bedevilled municipal politics in Winnipeg (and elsewhere) for far too long. We need a common agenda for a resilient, sustainable future for everyone in the city, not a series of personal agendas, pet peeves and one-ward wonders.

So, please, go vote. Think for yourself, and don’t listen to anyone else’s opinions. Just ask yourself these questions:

If you or your family were in trouble, would you trust this person to help you? Would they show up or run away? Would they get the job done, or make excuses? Would they take real steps to solve serious problems, or would they only wave their arms and send you “thoughts and prayers”?

On Oct. 26, I’m going to vote to solve problems, not to dodge them or to create new ones. What about you?

Peter Denton is an activist, writer and scholar.