Early Election Results

It looks like almost everybody wins tonight.  Was there a big win for anybody, no.  Maybe it's best this way.

The Liberals will once again form the government of Ontario, missing a majority by one seat.  Could it have been better?  Sure, losing the majority government status is painful!  Still, that counts as a win, particularly given how low they were in the polls early in the election run-up.  They lost a whole lot of seats, but they are still the government and that counts for something.

The PCs gained about dozen seats and that's a win.  Sure, they didn't form the government and that's probably disappointing to them, but their gains are enough to qualify as a victory.  Anyway, I think Ontario is better off with the PCs as a strong opposition party than as a government.  In general, minority governments accomplish less, but what they do accomplish tends to be better for the entire constituency as ideological legislative moves are mostly eliminated.  As far as I'm concerned, crisis averted.  The Evil Empire did not win. (Incidentally, the New York Yankees were eliminated from  the Major League Baseball playoffs on this very same night -- another Evil Empire defeated.)

The New Democrats gained about 7 seats in the legislature, which is a 70% increase over what they had coming into the election.  With an election this close (the polls showed the Libs and PCs almost neck and neck in the popular vote) it was going to be difficult for the NDP to make significant gains as many voters jockey to try and affect the resulting government rather than support their favorite party.  They made these gains in spite of this dynamic which is a huge victory!

The sole losers, and I am not entirely comfortable using that word, is the Green Party.  Since they are just an emerging party (rather than an established party) the closeness of the election worked against them in a very bad way.  People had to ignore the fact that they were most likely 'throwing their vote away' in a close election to cast a ballot for the Greens.  In several ridings the margin of victory over the 2nd place candidate was less than the handful of votes that went to the Green Party.  If the pre-election polls had indicated a majority of some colour there would have been many, many more people that felt free to vote with their conscience and vote Green.  I was hoping that they would break through with a seat or two, but realistically did not expect it to happen today.  The deck was stacked against them and their results should surprise no one.

All that remains to be seen now is whether this government can last the full four year term or whether it will be defeated in a non-confidence vote some time before that.  We just had that happen federally and the results were disastrous (IMHO), so I hope this doesn't happen provincially, too.  Having election after election is an expensive proposition both in terms of dollars and in terms of democracy.  With so many complaining about how tax dollars are spent it seems ludicrous to burn money in that fashion.

Given the 'happy' news for so many parties (and Parties) I'd say "Congratulations" except for one thing.  Apparently this was the poorest voter turn out in Ontario history.  How, in such a close race, apathy ran rampant I don't understand.  The only conclusion I can make is that this is a huge indictment of politics, or perhaps politicians, in general.  People are tired of interchangeable candidates spouting false promises, lies, half-truths, slander, ideological nonsense and all the rest of the typical B.S.  The fact that you vote for both a candidate and a leader with a single vote doesn't help things.  The best candidate for your riding may or may not wear the same colour tie as the best possible leader for the province, and it's possible that neither of these people represent the party that you think would do the best job, but we have just one vote to select the best compromise for all three decisions.  Clearly, that's enough to disillusion a lot of people sufficiently for them to abdicate their right and responsibility to vote.

How do we fix this problem?  I wish I knew.

Democracy is apparently dying a slow death before our very eyes and we seem powerless to stop it.  And it's not a local phenomenon, either.  Through extreme ideological posturing/behaviour and a complete refusal to negotiate (or be remotely reasonable, or act in the best interests of the country), the Tea Party south of the border is doing a fine job of killing democracy in America, too.  They came close to bringing down the country itself along with democracy, and I doubt that they are done -- they seem to have learned nothing from what little backlash there was against their near treasonous taking hostage of America's economy except perhaps that they can get away with anything at all and in the process manage to put all the egg (and blame) on President Obama whose sole 'crime' is having been in Office when the People elected scads of charismatic but completely incompetent, ideologically motivated politicians to both houses.

Maybe some brilliant person or people will suggest something feasible in the comments here -- there have to be people reading this out there smarter than I am -- but I'm not holding my breath.  I figure that any solution would have to come from the grassroots as the politicians and parties are too close to the problem to have any insight or objectivity.  However, I pretty much only expect flaming from trolls.  In the world today, no one seems interested in doing anything constructive anymore, not when they can be anonymously destructive.  Apparently they feel crime pays when there's no chance of being caught.  Actually, I suspect that they would go so far as to claim that "it isn't illegal unless you get caught", which of course is completely asinine and completely wrong.  It's scary how little most people get out of their education.