This election exhausted me. It tired me out so much that I voted two weeks ahead of schedule. I went into to my riding’s election office and performed the simplest of acts: I pushed a piece of paper into a box. I guess I just wanted all the hoopla to end.
The election is everywhere-turn on the TV, peruse any paper, you can’t escape it. Now, a week (maybe even two) of heavy election coverage is fine, even encouraged, in my book. That’s plenty of time to make a decision about whom you’re going to vote for. If you feel like you need more time, you’re worrying/fearing too much. So stop it. It’s not a sign of understanding the brevity of your choice. It’s the candidates projecting their stress onto you.
We’ve been aware that this federal showdown was going to happen months ago. And I’m not talking about last November when Martin’s government was brought down. Remember April 21, 2005? Sure, you might have been too wrapped up in your exams at the time to truly care about things like the Gomery Report, but, somewhere in the back of your brain a “January 2006 = election…” post-it note was floating around, waiting.
That’s nine months of news coverage on the same candidates you voted for waaaay back in June 2004. It feels like “filler”- a distraction from other more pressing issues that we’re not learning about.
Some of you may say, “Hey, the Sponsorship Scandal is a pressing issue, and it’s going to affect my vote!” Well then, chances are you know how you’re going to vote. Does it really take nine months of interviews with incensed citizens and bumbling politicians to solidify that decision for you?
And no matter how horrified you are about the state of government, I grew up in the States, and let me tell you, this “scandal” is peanuts compared to levels of embezzlement down there. The same goes for the smear campaigns the media is having a heart attack over.
Stop clutching your chest. Martin actually apologized to Harper for one of the ads. Did Bush ever extend the same courtesy to Kerry for those Swift Boat commercials? No.
I think Canada is going to survive this one. I’m not so sure about myself, though.
To get a feel for what I wanted to say in this piece, I Googled the definition of “election,” and the hit that I wanted most to write about said “Election is a 1999 film adapted from a novel of the same name by Tom Perrotta.”
In the movie, G.W. Carver High School’s student body presidential election only lasts a week. They even vote in a quasi-megalomaniac, peppy, obsessive over-achiever, and the building doesn’t burn to the ground or anything!
I would love to live in that world right now.
