‘Vote splitting’ is a preconditioned term that has been used for decades, to invoke a form of guilt in those who are susceptible and to persuade or influence the outcome of an election. I am sure you all heard the term ‘guilt trip’ that is what this does. It guilts you into voting for a weak leader to remove another weak leader from office. We’ve all heard the terms before: ‘you’re wasting your vote’, ‘they’re never going to win’ so why bother voting for them? You are not allowed to think outside the box and must vote within the two-party approved system.
When a large enough group of people fall for this propaganda, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and yes it can sway the vote as it was designed to do. Guilt is a strong emotion in humans that has been used by many in power to influence the outcome of many events. Just look at how it was deployed and used in the covid pandemic. If enough people believe a party cannot be elected and are swayed to vote for someone else, that will affect the outcome. However, it was not voting splitting that caused it, it was their falling for the lies and changing their vote, based on a false presumption. It’s not rocket science, if enough people vote for one party or one person they will win, it is just that simple. What is not so simple is getting someone to see that they’ve been influenced into voting for someone else, or the lesser of two evils.
In Canada, I cannot recall an election where we voted party/person into office based on morals, platforms, and policies that were best for Canadians. It is just not the Canadian way, we get all excited to vote someone out of office, you know the person we just voted in office the last election cycle to get the other person out of office before them. It is a vicious cycle that not only keeps repeating itself but is morally degrading to our society. The term ‘Voting splitting’ as applied to ‘vote someone out’ of office only focuses on the person in the office. Everything becomes about removing them from office at all costs; thus, the focus is completely on what they did wrong and their failings. What it doesn’t do is focus on the party or person you are trying to elect, the favored party/person’s policies and platform get overlooked and many are willing to accept them as marginally better. In many cases, they are given a complete pass and not held to account for what they did in the past and their values or morals are often not considered. However, this process has been a colossal failure in Canadian politics and has only led to a worse, inadequate, and more corrupt government than the previous one.
In order, for Canadians to obtain a government that will do what is right and good for the people, we must vote for our morals and conscience, the people need to change. We need to hold the party/person to a higher standard. If we are willing to fall for the lie of vote splitting, strategic voting, and voting for the lesser of two evils, that is all we will get is one corrupt government after another.
I will let you ponder this question:
Has our government got better over the last 50 years by voting someone out?
Last federal election we had no PPC candidate in our SS/St. Margaret’s riding. Let us hope things will be different in the next federal election. The current choices are akin to no choice.