Voter Turnout To Avance Polls Up 17%
While there are many variables that could affect the increase in voter turnout to the advance polls which increased this election to 1623 voters compared with 1387 in the 2008 election, we can be hopeful it means more people are participating. If this trend were to apply to voter turnout this Saturday it would mean that 3392 more people will have voted in this election when you apply a 17% increase to the 19,954 who voted in 2008.
Voter apathy has been a creeping sickness that has infected Canadian voters, taking more and more victims it seems with each passing year. This is not just a local sickness but one affecting provincial and federal elections as well. We seem to be able to shrug off our symptoms of apathy with thoughts such as "they are all the same it doesn't matter who you vote for" and "my vote doesn't really matter anyway" and "the system is so corrupt nothing will ever change".
All of these excuses seem to be a part of the sickness known as voter apathy and while people around the world have been laying down their lives to live in the freedom a democracy offers, once infected, we are quite content to let dictators rule over us by default. The deFAULT is ours by not recognizing the sickness we have been stricken with and doing something about it.
The cure for this sickness is to simply give our heads a shake, and give 10% as much attention to what our political rulers are doing as what is happening with our favourite television show or our revered sports team.
Our leaders who really want to be dictators and really don't care what we think are quite content to do as they please once elected, secure in the knowledge that the same disease which produced such poor voter participation will produce even less attention to what goes on between elections. That is why spending keeps going through the roof, why civil servants (oxymoron) wages and benefits are 30% higher than the private sector with benefit packages us mere mortals can only dream of having.
YOU are the most important part of a properly functioning democracy and democracy is far too important to leave to the elected and unelected people making all the choices. It is YOUR CIVIC DUTY to participate in the process of electing the people this Saturday who will be charged with running a $160,000,000.00 corporation of which YOU are a shareholder.
If you think your vote doesn't matter remember that only a little over 12,000 people decided a few years ago we should build a convention centre, and $75,000,000.00 later we have what is arguably a great facility which went at least $25 million over budget and is costing taxpayers $1,000,000.00 each year to operate. How much better off would we be, had we gotten off the couch and spent the time to participate in the process??
DEMOCRACY IS FAR TOO IMPORTANT TO LEAVE TO THE POLITICIANS
DO YOUR PART ----- GET INFORMED ----- GET INVOLVED
THIS SATURDAY NOVEMBER 19TH BE SURE TO VOTE
THE REST OF NANAIMO DEPENDS ON YOU
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