You couldn’t be blamed for being a little tired of federal elections. After all, on May 2 many of us will head to the polls for the fourth time in seven years.
That can be a little discouraging for a country that normally waits four or more years between elections.
To make matters worse, as Albertans many of us just take for granted that the Conservative Party of Canada will get the vast majority of seats — if not all of them. As such, it can be tempting to just say, “Forget it,” and not even bother.
Despite talk of election fatigue, or any cynicism about whether the parties can work together, or any fear mongering about who might form a coalition government with whom, we can’t afford to become apathetic. We all have opinions, and need to be heard.
Anybody who has studied civics in sixth grade will tell you that the system doesn’t work if people don’t get involved — and in this Parliamentary system of ours, we don’t really get many options to be involved.
You can join a political party, make financial donations, write a letter to your representative, or write a letter to your local newspaper about the issues you think are important.
Once your Member of Parliament is elected, though, what they do is really up to them. We elect them to make decisions for us, and for the vast majority of residents, that’s unfortunately the end of political involvement.
At the end of the day the most significant single opportunity to have your voice heard rests in your choice of what you do with your ballot.
In Westlock-St. Paul, we have will have four names to choose from, or we also have the option of formally rejecting or spoiling our ballot if none of those options suit our own particular tastes.
The absolute worst thing we could decide to do, though, is to not show up at all.
Consider for a moment what has been happening all over the world for the past century — and even longer. Time and time against oppressed people rise up and risk their own lives, just to have an opportunity to be given a ballot.
Countless individuals have died in pursuit of what we often take for granted in our own country.
It can often seem like children on the schoolyard are more respectful and more capable of overcoming their differences than our political leaders, but that’s no excuse to simply tune out. Get out and vote May 2.
