Well, the day is over, the ballots have been cast and…
And we don’t know. Things are still too close to call until all the votes have been recounted.
And then? And then we probably still don’t know. If things remain as they are, no single party will have a majority.
What that means is the Lieutenant Governor will approach one of the leaders of one of the parties (typically the one with the most seats), and invite them to form the government.
In 2017—the last time this happened in the province—it was the Liberals under Christie Clark that formed the government for about five minutes, when her speech from the throne was voted down. Clark asked the Lieutenant Governor to dissolve the legislature and call a new election. She didn’t, and instead approached the NDP to form the government, which they did, with the support of the three Green candidates.
That was the end of 16 years of the BC Liberals being in power, and ushered in two back to back victories for the NDP. (This is fairly typical of the way BC politics work. Before the Liberals, the NDP were in power for two terms after four terms by the BC Socred party (remember them?). They were also elected for one term in the early 1970s, then its Socreds, Liberals and Conservatives back to 1903. Before that, there were no official parties, and people just voted for the best person for the job.
You’ve heard that saying before, right? I don’t vote for the party, I vote for the person. But if this election has proved one thing, it’s that people vote for the party.
Indeed, this was the perfect litmus test of the concept: vote the person, not the party. Forget the Peace; let’s look at Cariboo North, where last election, Coralee Oakes won by more than 1500 votes over her NDP rival. The Conservative candidate? Was more than 4000 votes behind.
Now, I hate to call any member of parliament more popular than another, but Coralee was well liked, both in the area she represented, and across the province.
But when the choice came down to voting for the person or for the party? More than twice the number of voters voted for Conservative Sheldon Clare than for Oakes.
Clare is not a complete unknown in the area, but his bona fides include being president of the Prince George Rod and Gun Club and chairman of the PG section of the Alpine Club of Canada.
Before being elected provincially, Oakes sat on Quesnel Council for two terms, and was executive director of the Chamber of Commerce since 1999.
Basically, I’m saying that if people really voted for the person rather than the party, the race would have been closer.
And I don’t even think it was voting for the party that people liked, but rather people voting for the party with the best chance of beating the party they didn’t like.
You catch the difference? People voted for the party that best opposed the party they didn’t like. It wasn’t ABNDP: Anyone But NDP, it was the anti-NDP vote that carried the day in so many ridings.
I’ve always resisted that idea, and fully support voting for the person you most support, rather than voting against the party you least support.
And vote splitting? Let the votes be split. Let them fall where they may.
Canadian politics has always run the risk of becoming more and more like the US system, where things are boiled down into an easy binary—left, right, Democrat, Republican.
Us. Them.
I have a friend, whose politics skew left, who is currently complaining that people voted Green in some of the tighter races down south, allowing the Conservatives to sneak in. While he’ll rail against the two party system, he’ll also rail against how being able to vote your conscience means sometimes the other guys win.
That’s this election. Seven years ago, the complaints went the other way, and it was the right that was being split.
Meanwhile, more progressive democracies have moved to a system called a “Single Transferable Vote” system, where, if your candidate of choice loses, but you really don’t want to see the NDP/Liberals/Conservatives/Rhino party get elected, you can rank the candidates in order of preference. “Okay, I really want to see the ‘Party of Citizens Who Have Decided To Think For Ourselves & Be Our Own Politicians’ candidate get elected, but if she doesn’t win, then my second choice is the BC Cascadia Party. And if they get eliminated, then I want my vote to go to the “Your Political Party of BC”. And so on down the line. If you really don’t want to see the Non-Partisan Independent candidate get elected, you can simply not put a number beside their name.
They’re starting to use a variation of the Single Transferable vote system in places down in the states, and they’re finding that it’s leading to more cooperative elections, less scorched earth political campaigns,
And the trouble with scorched earth campaigns? It makes it hard to survive the aftermath.
The BC Conservatives haven’t quite gone full scorched earth, but Rustad left no doubt as to where he stands, promising to do all he can to bring the current government down as fast as he can. His goal is to prevent the NDP from doing “any more destruction in the province.” And his tactics? Are to try and topple the government. He vows to keep hammering at the wedge that divides the province until it falls to flinders and he can pick up the pieces and rebuild the province in his image, or something like that.
But of course, I’m just being cynical. Election season always causes people to retreat to their ideological corners and start throwing rocks.
But as someone with friends on both sides of the political divide, it’s hard not to feel attacked from both directions. Here’s hoping the next few years aren’t as rocky as they look like at this moment.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
