Worth Sharing

Warning: if you're interested in this sort of thing, you may soon become lost in the articles/blogs linked in Andrew Potter's blog, and the ones linked in those pieces, etc. Maybe look through when you have some time on your hands and no deadline looming.

Andrew Potter on the Sun and CBC's Vote Compass.

If you follow me on Twitter or we're friends on Facebook, you'll know that I promoted the Vote Compass as a fun way to see where you stand in relation to political parties. I didn't think of it as "see how you should vote" - I thought of it as "see how little you probably agree with the party line from the party you think you're supposed to vote for". I've read conflicting claims on whether the Compass is actually biased toward a Liberal vote (that is, that no matter what you put you'll almost always be told you're closest to the Liberal Party), and haven't looked into it myself yet, so I can't really comment on that at the moment.

First of all, people shouldn't be using the Vote Compass to figure out who they should vote for. If they genuinely don't know who to pick, the Compass might point them in the direction of a party or parties that they might want to look into further. If nothing else, the issues addressed in the questions may make them realise they actually care about those things, and look into what each party says about them.

But the fact that people who know who they want to vote for are upset because the Compass tells them to vote for the wrong party was exactly my point - people can become too fixated on the party line on issues, and on making that party line their opinion. When presented with opinions to choose from without having the party's opinion on hand, people may be surprised to find out their opinion is different - and that's okay. You can still vote for a party without agreeing with what they have to say on every issue. In fact, I doubt there's a single person alive who agrees with the party line on every issue - political parties are by nature pluralistic, and can't possibly be tailored to individuals. When you vote, you vote for the candidate or party that best represents your view and that you think would do the best job for your riding (well, country - regardless of the political system, many/most people likely still vote based on who they want to be Prime Minister, not who they want to be their local MP).

I'm interested to see how this whole thing plays out though - a new, different story when election campaigns provide same old, same old.