She wants your vote, she’ll share your vote, but it’s just that she’s not particularly clear at all times on what you should do with your vote.
Elizabeth May, steward of all that is Green in this election is showing a tendency towards waffling on the topic, never a good thing for a politician and especially for a leader seeking to launch her party onto the national consciousness.
May who has been offering up mixed messages for the last few weeks when it comes to strategic voting, has managed to confuse even her own candidates. So far this week Green party members in some regions have offered up the wish that voters drop them like a rock, while others have come forward with the opinion that all of this vote shepherding isn’t going to make for good news for the Greens on election day, or in the long term.
The concept of the strategic vote is one which is rather new to the Canadian experience, a growth of our ever splintering party system and the pizza style parliaments that seem to be our perpetual fate now.
Even as this election winds down, the prospect of yet another minority government is the expected result on Tuesday; one which will see the leader of whichever party grabs the most votes off scrambling to build alliances by Wednesday morning.
Clearly the Greens are realistic enough to understand that they won’t be forming the government next week, but you have to begin to question their process in running candidates for the bulk of the campaign, only to undermine them in the final stages and try to slide those would be voters to another candidate.
Perhaps it might have been better to identify some key ridings where they seriously have a chance to gain representation in the House of Commons and focus on those ridings, rather than play a shell game of candidates of convenience, more than willing to wave the white flag and then steer the voters to a new best hope in another party.
Until their leader, the candidates, their troops in the ridings and the party supporters all get on the same page the Green message will remain rather confusing.
Even worse for them will be the damage to their own party and its core beliefs that they will be causing, why would anyone invest their time, effort and long hours if at the end of the day the party just abandons the process. It's a question that one former Green member is asking as this campaign winds down.
The Greens have added a fresh voice with a serious perspective to the electoral process in Canada, offering a much different set of political optics to the normal routine of political campaigning. They do however run the danger of becoming just another protest party vote steeped in one issue, should they not become more focused on what it is they hope to achieve.
But the over riding question for the Greens in these final days, is, if the leader and the executive suddenly don’t seem to be taking some of their own candidates seriously in their ridings, why should the voters on Election Day?
Elizabeth May, steward of all that is Green in this election is showing a tendency towards waffling on the topic, never a good thing for a politician and especially for a leader seeking to launch her party onto the national consciousness.
May who has been offering up mixed messages for the last few weeks when it comes to strategic voting, has managed to confuse even her own candidates. So far this week Green party members in some regions have offered up the wish that voters drop them like a rock, while others have come forward with the opinion that all of this vote shepherding isn’t going to make for good news for the Greens on election day, or in the long term.
The concept of the strategic vote is one which is rather new to the Canadian experience, a growth of our ever splintering party system and the pizza style parliaments that seem to be our perpetual fate now.
Even as this election winds down, the prospect of yet another minority government is the expected result on Tuesday; one which will see the leader of whichever party grabs the most votes off scrambling to build alliances by Wednesday morning.
Clearly the Greens are realistic enough to understand that they won’t be forming the government next week, but you have to begin to question their process in running candidates for the bulk of the campaign, only to undermine them in the final stages and try to slide those would be voters to another candidate.
Perhaps it might have been better to identify some key ridings where they seriously have a chance to gain representation in the House of Commons and focus on those ridings, rather than play a shell game of candidates of convenience, more than willing to wave the white flag and then steer the voters to a new best hope in another party.
Until their leader, the candidates, their troops in the ridings and the party supporters all get on the same page the Green message will remain rather confusing.
Even worse for them will be the damage to their own party and its core beliefs that they will be causing, why would anyone invest their time, effort and long hours if at the end of the day the party just abandons the process. It's a question that one former Green member is asking as this campaign winds down.
The Greens have added a fresh voice with a serious perspective to the electoral process in Canada, offering a much different set of political optics to the normal routine of political campaigning. They do however run the danger of becoming just another protest party vote steeped in one issue, should they not become more focused on what it is they hope to achieve.
But the over riding question for the Greens in these final days, is, if the leader and the executive suddenly don’t seem to be taking some of their own candidates seriously in their ridings, why should the voters on Election Day?
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