{"id":7164,"date":"2014-06-25T17:48:43","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T21:48:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=7164"},"modified":"2014-07-09T23:04:22","modified_gmt":"2014-07-10T03:04:22","slug":"politics-as-usual-none-of-the-above","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/politics-as-usual-none-of-the-above\/","title":{"rendered":"POLITICS AS USUAL: None of the Above"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas<\/strong><\/p>\n

As they say, it\u2019s all over but the crying. And I am sure there\u2019s lots of crying. And gnashing of teeth. And a few choice words for a party leader. Or two.
\nIt\u2019s been two weeks now since the provincial election and while the puditocracy is still mewling about the \u201csurprise\u201d majority of the Wynne liberals, there is \u2013 finally \u2013 growing realization that there is a much bigger story in the midst of the results.
\nThe Hudak campaign appears to have imploded from the weight of an ill-conceived \u201cplan\u201d and Wynne\u2019s Liberals leveraged that disaster to snatch a victory. But that\u2019s not the story. The story is about the election itself and what it means about the state of democracy in our province.
\nThe numbers don\u2019t lie. Fewer and fewer voters exercise their democratic rights. This time around, just slightly more than 50 percent of eligible voters bothered to vote. A slight uptick since the 2011 election, but not much, and certainly nothing to cheer about.
\nIn our riding, around 52,000 people cast their votes from a potential pool of about 100,000 or so voters. Newmarket-Aurora was in line with the provincial average \u2013 just 52% voted. Of that (using rounded numbers) 22,900 voted Liberal (about 44%), 19,500 voted PC (or about 37%), 6,100 voted NDP (or about 11.5%) and 2,100 voted Green (or about 4%).
\nThose are the numbers, but what does that tell us?
\nIt tells us that a majority, or win, is all relative. A majority of what \u2013 eligible votes or votes cast? In our riding, the \u201cwinner\u201d has taken the riding with 44% of votes cast but only 23% of eligible votes.
\nThe numbers mirror what has occurred on a provincial level. The Liberals won 55% of the seats with 38% of the popular vote \u2013 of just 52% of eligible votes. You do the math on what a \u201cmajority\u201d truly looks like.
\nElectoral \u201cwins\u201d are majorities based on those that chose to vote, not those that could vote.
\nThis is not to knock the victors. The results are no different at any level of government \u2013 from municipal to federal.
\nWith average voter turnout hovering at 40% – no party, no candidate can claim to have a \u201cclear mandate\u201d having won less than 25% of the eligible votes. They are pyrrhic victories at best.
\nBut there is a larger, more startling fact about the recent results. A sizeable number of voters chose to decline their ballots \u2013 in essence cast a vote for \u201cnone of the above.\u201d Voters went to their polling station, registered, and then handed back their ballot. Not spoiled. Declined. A polite, protest vote \u2013 in typical Canadian fashion.
\nOver 31,000 people declined their vote. Over 31,000 people thought that no party, no candidate was worthy of elected office. The highest number in over 40 years.
\nIt was reported in one daily that if declined ballots were counted as a party, then \u201cthey\u201d would have finished fifth in the election or just behind the Green party.
\nI could not find figures about how many declined votes were cast in Newmarket-Aurora. Just over a hundred declined votes were cast in 2011. It would be interesting to see what happened this time around.
\nI am not sure of the utility of the declined vote in terms of protest, but in terms of symbolism, I think it makes an important point. Coupled with low voter turn-out, a 10-fold increase in declined ballots tells us that the time for dithering is over.
\nUnless we want to see the leader of the \u201cnone of the above\u201d party as our Premier, we need to find ways to re-engage in the democratic process.
\nLet\u2019s hope that four years from now, when we go to the polls again, we will cast our ballot with confidence not decline in protest.
\nUntil next week, stay informed, stay involved because this is \u2013 after all \u2013 Our Town.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas As they say, it\u2019s all over but the crying. And I am sure there\u2019s lots of crying. And gnashing of teeth. And a few choice words for a party leader. Or two. It\u2019s been two weeks now since the provincial election and while the puditocracy is still mewling about the \u201csurprise\u201d majority […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-1Ry","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-04 13:46:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}