Darren says he’s voting green, and gives his reasons for his decision. Personally, I’m still undecided. Lately I’ve been thinking more about Canadian politics, especially after the Leaders Debate a week ago.
To help make my decision I decided not to go with the candidate-o-matic and ask my local candidates directly.
I sent the following email to the local candidates for the Green, Liberal, NDP, and Conservaties (sadly the Christian Heritage Parties values are pretty much 180 degrees different than mine):
Good afternoon $candidate.
I’m a 28 year old resident of abbotsford and am currently trying to find a party to support in the upcoming election. In doing this am I
starting to email candidates to ask them about their positions and those of your party. Basically asking why I should give my vote to you rather
than “the other guy(s)” or for that matter, vote at all.
I’ll start with something pretty big. What would you do to improve your riding of Abbotsford?
What are your/your parties position on…
– the war with iraq and canada’s global position in regards to this and
the US
– what to do about the mad cow issues with the US
– abortion
– gay rights
– regulation of the airwaves, IE: the issues with Howard Stern in the
US
– music downloading off the internet and IP rights
– hockey
– the war in Iraq
– women in the military
– the death penalty
Hopefully you’ll find time to throw back some answers to me so that I
can know if I should support you or not.
Best regards and thankyou for your time.
I thought it was well worded enough to indicate a desire to see their intentions and maybe, just maybe get a feel for the sort of person they are.
To date I have recieved only one reply, from Karl Hann of the Green Party. Sadly it wasn’t really encouraging.
I would say that people should use their own mind to vote and as far as certain issues go I am not running for an office and I also don’t believe that people should expect miracle from a politician to do some thing. WE are in this together. With sufficient votes the people might get a person into office that takes a message to the hill and deal with it in a more democratic way than it has been in the past. All people think that their issues are the most pressing. In the end we want to live together and this is what we have to work on, not on being ruled over.
karl
Based on that I’m not even sure he’s actually running, and if he is he sure as hell isn’t giving me any confidence that he’ll do anything if he gets in (which he seems to say there’s no chance).
Maybe my email was just badly worded, or the wrong approache, or what. Maybe they are all just too important to respond to one lone voter.
Maybe I should call them up and ask why they haven’t replied to my email?