Federal Election 2019

[Bullfrog]

I don't think there's ever a perfect system, but I think a ranked ballot seems to make the most sense from what I've read. I was an advocate of PR, but busta's done a good job of explaining why I've gotten off that train.

 

[Nik]

I don't think there's ever a perfect system, but I think a ranked ballot seems to make the most sense from what I've read. I was an advocate of PR, but busta's done a good job of explaining why I've gotten off that train.

It's definitely got some upsides but it would be hard to get away from the optics problem of the Liberals pushing for an electoral system that would probably help them the most.

 

[Nik]

Annamie Paul got smoked in her own riding.

Yeah I'm just not sure who the Green's constituency is supposed to be in downtown Toronto. We don't have a lot of the "I'm for fiscally sound policy but I want my boat in a clean marina" sorts they do in Vancouver Island.

 

[bustaheims]

It's definitely got some upsides but it would be hard to get away from the optics problem of the Liberals pushing for an electoral system that would probably help them the most.

That, and I have a hard time envisioning much, if any, support from the NDP or the BQ, as they'd both come out on the short-end in a ranked ballot system. I don't see the CPC supporting it, either, though I suspect they might gain some benefit from it.

Electoral reform, while a worthwhile endeavour, is just such a political landmine. It's no surprise that it hasn't received much by way of serious consideration by a sitting parliament.

 

[OldTimeHockey]

What a waste of $600+ million.

No doubt. The only thing it accomplished for myself is I visited a church that I had yet to be in. Thank god.

You mean, Thank Trudeau.

But I guess that's one and the same. bahahahaaha..

I'll see myself out.

I was just glad I didn't burst into flames.

 

[OldTimeHockey]

So we heard coming in that the PPC was going to split the conservative vote. Now that it's all said in done, do we think it really effected the outcome?

 

[princedpw]

I?ll never understand why they don?t have online voting. The turnout should be through the roof.

There's at least one, maybe two generations of people for whom online voting would instantly mean elections could be "hacked" regardless of what safeguards are in place or verification systems are used. Just look at what we saw in the States with just some of the voting machines being computerized and what the nutjobs think that means.

Considering that those older voters tend to turnout in stronger numbers and would be least open to the idea...well, that's why we don't have it.

My understanding is that it is actually extremely difficult, maybe impossible, to implement online voting securely enough.  (I'm a prof in computer science -- I don't follow this topic at all, but some of my colleagues do.). There are a couple ways that it is different than something like online banking, which we all use regularly:

* voting should be anonymous -- no one should know how you vote.  but you aren't anonymous to your bank.  This makes it easiest to detect when things go wrong, prove that things have gone wrong, and fix them when they do.

* timing is crucial -- votes need to be counted by a certain day.  if there is some kind of attack that can only be resolved later, there is going to be a massive threat to democracy.  "getting your money back later" just might not be good enough

* getting the US election right, for example, is more important that just about anything to the right people.  The incentives for putting the right person in place are worth billions and billions of dollars. eg: a corporate or personal tax cut is easily worth 10s of billions to the right people.  This is worth much more than an electronic transfer gone wrong here or there. 

This article explains:

https://medium.com/digital-diplomacy/security-experts-say-online-voting-is-a-bad-idea-heres-why-1792c9a876b0

 

[Frank E]

So we heard coming in that the PPC was going to split the conservative vote. Now that it's all said in done, do we think it really effected the outcome?

Popular vote:

CPC - 5.43m
LIB - 5.16m
NDP - 2.83m
BQ - 1.24m
PPC - 814K
GRN - 371K

So I'd say not much on the overall voting side, but they beat the Greens. 

The Green Party was irrelevant in this election.

 

[Nik]

There's at least one, maybe two generations of people for whom online voting would instantly mean elections could be "hacked" regardless of what safeguards are in place or verification systems are used. Just look at what we saw in the States with just some of the voting machines being computerized and what the nutjobs think that means.

Considering that those older voters tend to turnout in stronger numbers and would be least open to the idea...well, that's why we don't have it.

My understanding is that it is actually extremely difficult, maybe impossible, to implement online voting securely enough.  (I'm a prof in computer science -- I don't follow this topic at all, but some of my colleagues do.). There are a couple ways that it is different than something like online banking, which we all use regularly:

* voting should be anonymous -- no one should know how you vote.  but you aren't anonymous to your bank.  This makes it easiest to detect when things go wrong, prove that things have gone wrong, and fix them when they do.

* timing is crucial -- votes need to be counted by a certain day.  if there is some kind of attack that can only be resolved later, there is going to be a massive threat to democracy.  "getting your money back later" just might not be good enough

* getting the US election right, for example, is more important that just about anything to the right people.  The incentives for putting the right person in place are worth billions and billions of dollars. eg: a corporate or personal tax cut is easily worth 10s of billions to the right people.  This is worth much more than an electronic transfer gone wrong here or there. 

This article explains:

https://medium.com/digital-diplomacy/security-experts-say-online-voting-is-a-bad-idea-heres-why-1792c9a876b0
[/quote]

I will take your word on the technical aspects. My only experience with it is in Australia where voting is, or at least was, mandatory.

 

[Nik]

So we heard coming in that the PPC was going to split the conservative vote. Now that it's all said in done, do we think it really effected the outcome?

In a significant way, probably not. Maybe it winds up costing them a few seats but that's always impossible to tell.

 

[bustaheims]

So we heard coming in that the PPC was going to split the conservative vote. Now that it's all said in done, do we think it really effected the outcome?

In a significant way, probably not. Maybe it winds up costing them a few seats but that's always impossible to tell.

I wonder if they had more of a psychological impact than they did at the actual ballot box. Did their more prominent presence impact the CPC platform on some level? Did the appearance of a divide on the right motivate some voters on the left or push some right-leaning moderates to the Liberals? Also very difficult/impossible to really tell.

 

[L K]

I think its a bit of an embarrassment that the PPC got 800K votes but I really don't think they stole enough votes from the PCs to make a big difference in an election.

 

[Nik]

I think its a bit of an embarrassment that the PPC got 800K votes but I really don't think they stole enough votes from the PCs to make a big difference in an election.

I've seen some people say how troubling it is that they got 5% of the vote or whatever but did anyone really doubt during the Harper years that at least around that percentage of the CPC base was effectively that extreme but just voting Conservative anyway?

 

[herman]

Didn't Maxime come pretty close to winning the CPC leadership?

 

[Bender]

It's kind of odd to me that I saw commentary on vote splitting by the PPC but to some degree the Libs/NDP have been vote splitting each other for decades.

I think my main take away is Canada is moving forward more as a progressive/moderate progressive nation above conservative/hard conservative, despite the loudness of the people in the back.

 

[Bullfrog]

If you lump Conservatives and PPC together, you get about 39% of the vote. The liberal-leaning group more-or-less gets the rest. Still a fairly even split, surprisingly to me.

 

[bustaheims]

If you lump Conservatives and PPC together, you get about 39% of the vote. The liberal-leaning group more-or-less gets the rest. Still a fairly even split, surprisingly to me.

That?s been the rough split for a long time now. We are, as a whole, a left-leaning moderate nation.

 

[Nik]

If you lump Conservatives and PPC together, you get about 39% of the vote. The liberal-leaning group more-or-less gets the rest. Still a fairly even split, surprisingly to me.

That's what it looks like now. The VBM should bring that number down slightly, closer to the 36% or so that's been the average for the right-leaning vote in the 7 elections since 2000. I guess that's fairly even but that's almost a 30 percent difference between your "left" and "right" in the country.

Obviously it's a little soon to get too into the weeds on the numbers but it looks like a fair number of voters stayed away in the election and what voter enthusiasm there was was stronger on the right than the left. Everyone's % was fairly consistent except the Greens and the PPC sort of swapped places from 2019. That maybe raises the question of to what extent the Green vote is "left" as opposed to just fringe but I think you'd need to see it happen at least twice to say it's a real trend.

 

[Heroic Shrimp]

https://twitter.com/perreaux/status/1440742300448006147

 

[Nik]

I have to be honest, I'm still really puzzled by all of the negative reaction to Trudeau's decision to call the election when he did. Sure, I understand why voters might be cheesed off even though A) society isn't shut down and voting was pretty low risk B) Voting by mail was super easy and C) the issues at stake were pretty important but I'm really confused by why the opposition parties wanted to make it a big thing.

1. Neither the NDP nor the Conservatives at any point during the pandemic exhibited any sort of "Hey, this is the biggest public health crisis in years, lets all pull together and put politics aside for now" sort of spirit. Now, I'm not necessarily saying they should have because it's reasonable for the NDP to advocate for a more Left Wing response and the Conservatives for a more Right Wing one but if that's the course of action you're going to take, if it's politics as usual when Parliament is in session, then it strikes me as pretty hypocritical to then be outraged by the idea that the dissolution of Parliament might likewise be politics as usual. If you're going to treat the Liberals like they have a minority government, it makes sense that they'll act like they have a minority government.

2. Even if Politicians being hypocrites doesn't do it for you and is sort of to be expected, isn't there a big messaging problem too though? If you're going to say that calling the election during the pandemic was reckless and ill-advised then you're de facto arguing that Trudeau should have dealt with the frustrations of a minority government and remained Prime Minister until the pandemic was over or his 4 years was up. So on the one hand you're trying to sell people on "Trudeau has been a terrible Prime Minister, he needs to be replaced urgently" while also making the case that the best thing for the country would be if he'd decided to be Prime Minister for the next two years. Voters took all this in and delivered a result that...will probably see Trudeau stay on as Prime Minister for at least the next two years.