The Countdown Begins

So I got the MY10 plan. Chose my ten friends and everything, (well 8 friends, and my mom and sister,) and am waiting for it to be activated Sunday. Unfortunately I don't get a new phone with it, like I thought I would. The guy at Rogers said to wait it out a couple more months until they can bribe me with an upgrade. Oh well... that's not what this countdown is for.

There is less than two weeks till the Canadian Elections, which means less than two weeks until I have to decide who to vote for. Unfortunately, I cannot sell my vote. So in the next 14 days, through this blog, I will eliminate candidates one by one untill I have someone to vote for.

For a recap, here are the seven candidates running in my riding, Mont-Royal:

Tyrell Alexander (Green Party of Canada)
Antonio Artuso (Communist Party of Canada)
Irwin Cotler (Liberal Party of Canada)
Diane Johnston (Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada)
Maryse Lavallée (Bloc Québécois)
Nicolas Thibodeau (New Democratic Party)
Rafael Tzoubari (Conservative Party of Canada)

Which brings the grand total of candidates to seven. With less than two weeks until the actual election, every two days I will be eliminating one candidate, starting with today. And again on the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, and last but not least, the 13th, when I will reveal my vote.

One important thing to remember while voting is to vote not only for which party you want to win, but also the candidates. Though the MPs representing specific ridings don't have as much importance as similar candidates in American politics, it is still important to agree with the Ideologies of the party, Prime Ministerial candidate, and MP candidate.

So who am I eliminating today? The Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada.

Forced to register under that name by the Government of Canada (you cannot have a party name that could be confused with another,) they prefer their "official" title; Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist.)

The fact of the matter is, they are a communist party. Do I at all agree with any communist ideologies? Not even close. There are so many things about Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin's ideologies that I disagree with I don't even want to get into why. Maybe another time. And even if I did vote for them, what does my vote accomplish? In the 2006 federal election, the Marxist-Leninist party finished with 0.028% of the vote in Mont-Royal. That's 98 votes out of 34,251.

I honestly think that if I started my own political party, became accredited, and was acknowledged as a real party by Canada in my riding, I could find more than 98 people to vote for me. Obviously, communist ideologies don't translate too well with the Liberal-minded Mont-Royal voters.

Oh yeah that reminds me. The results from the 2006 election, just for reference:

Canadian federal election, 2006
Party		Candidate	Votes
	Liberal	Irwin Cotler	22,457
	Conservative	Neil Martin Drabkin	6,150
	New Democrat	Nicolas R. Thibodeau	2,479
	Bloc Québécois	Guillaume Dussault	2,035
	Green	Damien Pichereau	1,302
	Marxist-Leninist	Diane Johnston	98

(courtesy of Wikipedia)

Now even though the Liberals clearly dominate the riding, that doesn't mean Cotler automatically gets my vote. Like I've said many times over, I don't know all that much about the candidates just yet, and will be doing my research in the next fortnight. (Sweet, always wanted to sue that word before [thank you Demetri Martin.])

Back to the Marxists-Leninists. Diane Johnston is running again this year, and all the power to her, even if she has literally no chance of winning, much less getting even one percent of the vote.

Onto the national stage:

The Marxist-Leninists, led once again by Sandra Smith, finished 9th in the popular vote in 2006, behind such powerhouse parties as the Progressive Canadian Party and the Marijuana Party. With three times as many candidates (69) as the PCP (25) and MP (23), the Marxist-Leninist party still managed to end up with about 5000 less votes than the Progressive Canadians and a couple hundred shy of the Marijuana Party.

The only benefit I can think of for someone with similar views to actually vote for them instead of abstaining would be sheer volume. Surely 104 sounds better than 98 or so. "The more the merrier" should be their motto, because with each vote, a teeny (very teeny) bit of credibility is added to their party.

Anyways that's it for now, sorry for the lack of blog updates, I've been quite busy with the Jewish Holidays. Keep checking back for more of The Blender as well as the next time (Friday) I take a candidate off my list.

Recap: The Marxist-Leninist Party was removed from the list. The party is headed by Sandra Smith nationally, and in the riding of Mont-Royal by Diane Johnston.