Electoral Reform: have an impact TODAY!

Here’s the short version: 

Today is the deadline for registration to vote in the Liberal party’s leadership race. One candidate (only one) has declared that she is committed to forming a serious, unprecedented, strategic coalition for electoral reform. And it isn’t the frontrunner, Justin Trudeau. It’s Joyce Murray. 

If you support fixing our electoral system, then please help her win: Register to vote, and do it now because tomorrow is too late. 

***********************

In case you’re not convinced, here’s a long version:

Dear friends and family. 

This might sound unusual, coming from me, but i’m asking you to “join” the Liberal Party of Canada. Today. Like right now.

Yeah, that sounds really fucking weird even to myself. But i’m not kidding. Have i experienced some kind of bizarre political “conversion”? No, not at all... So let me explain. 

We have a chance, today, to affect the outcome of the next federal election. 

Obviously, our government sucks rotting zombie balls. And that’s not just because Stephen Harper sucks. He sure does really, really suck; but our government pretty much sucked anyway, even before he showed up (and the Liberals dominated parliament). And that’s the problem. For a long, long time it’s felt like just about the best thing we can hope for is a government that sucks a bit less. (And even that usually seems overoptimistic.) As you probably know, i always freak out telling people about how important it is to vote — but the best argument i’ve been able to make is that it’s an important kind of “Harm Reduction.”

So why do i think participating in the Liberal party's leadership race can make things any better? Well it’s not about joining (or even supporting) the party. It’s about making ALL the parties work together. 

With literally 5 minutes of your time, for free, you can register to vote in their leadership race. And then you can vote in in April. 

The deadline to register is March 3rd. Yeah, Sunday: today. Right now. 

But why bother? Because in both of the last two elections Stephen Harper LOST. By a landslide. Hardly anyone voted for this asshole. So why the fuck is he our Prime Minister? How the fuck does he have a parliamentary “majority”? It’s not because people are stupid (they’re not). And it’s not because of a conspiracy (there’s no need for one). It’s just because our electoral system is shit. 

But there’s nothing we can do, right? Actually there is: We can make the electoral results matter; we can make the “popular” vote the actual vote. We can change our system; we can have proportional representation. We can work together, and pressure elected officials to do the same. We can pressure them all, by supporting the ones who already support proportional representation. 

We can register today to elect the only candidate in the Liberal leadership race who has a plan to establish a proportional system: Joyce Murray.

Joyce Murray is the only Liberal leadership candidate who supports absolute cross-party co-operation for electoral reform. She deserves our support.

She is an underdog candidate. That’s why your vote is needed. Tons of people are registering to “rock” the leadership vote. That’s why we have a chance. In the last couple of weeks the movement for electoral reform has mobilized to support her. If you really don’t believe me, go listen to what Avaaz, LeadNow, David Suzuki have to say. Read and think about what Naomi Klein, and all your favourite political commentators are saying about electoral co-operation.

Murray doesn’t just claim to “support” proportional representation; she is not saying that Canadians have to support the Liberal party and elect a Liberal majority to make it happen. She is saying she wants to work with anyone — from any political party — willing to help change the system. She has a plan to help form a strategic coalition among opposition parties.

Murray proposes that the opposition parties co-operate: 

• run a single candidate in swing ridings in 2015
• defeat Harper
• pass legislation for proportional representation. 

If Liberals, Greens, and the NDP co-operate in the next election, it will be our last under the current system. 

Please register today, right now. (I know, the deadline is stupid because the actual voting doesn’t happen until next month. But if we want change to come we have to confront present circumstances.)

Co-operation is possible. Today we can help make it happen.

***********************

Here's what little i have to say to the people who'll never read this anyway:

It’s always easy to abstain on principle. It’s easy to say that the choices we have are “not good enough.” And there’s no denying it’s true. But the righteous feeling of “purity” comes at a price. The consequences of our current parliament’s unrepresentativeness are made clearer every day by Harper’s abuses of power. This situation is unacceptable not only on principle, but especially because those consequences are felt disproportionally by the most vulnerable people in our society.

It’s up to the constituents of her riding to help Murray win her seat in the next general election. (Just as it’s up to each of us to elect MPs in our own community who are committed to proportional representation). But it’s up to us, today, to help her become the leader of her party. 

We have a chance to put proportional representation at the centre of political debate in the months and years ahead. If we act now, we can have a strong voice for proportional representation in a major influential position. 

We can have a dramatic transformation of politics in our pseudo-democracy. We can have proportional representation. But we have to work for it.

Help Joyce Murray become the next leader of the federal Liberal party. 

Please register right now.

***********************

Note: People rightly feel uneasy about clicking the stupid little box at the bottom that says: "I support the Liberal Party of Canada, and am not a member of another federal political party in Canada." It's bullshit like that, in principle, which has to be set aside in order to change our system. It's bullshit, because it contradicts the statement on the Liberal website that "we’re inviting all Canadians—and not just members—to help pick our next Leader." It's just a matter of good faith. It should say: "I promise i'm not just doing this to fuck with you."

If the very thing at issue in the leadership vote is the question of whether or not party affiliations should be more important than democratic politics itself, clicking a box like that is nothing but a bad joke. (Objectionable on principle, but insignificant compared to the dangerous consequences of refusing to overlook it.)