Thanks But No Thanks Quebec: Take My Ballot And Shove It

Well, I have decided not to vote in this charade of an election.  My principle reason is that my vote does not count -- it is totally ineffective -- because I live in a region where the same political party, the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ), has taken all of the region's seats for the last forty years.

Last election, I "lent" my vote to my wife and dutifully went down to the polls and voted strategically for the party that had the best chance of defeating the outgoing Liberal Member of the Quebec National Assembly, which at the time was the Parti Quebecois (PQ).

But even that didn't work out since the Liberal candidate won the riding.

As a last resort, I would go out and vote if I knew that the manner I voted controlled how the state subsidy for each vote was awarded.  I would make the trip to the polls if the Quebec Green Party and only the Quebec Green Party would receive an extra dollar fifty each year because I had voted for them.

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But the greedy bastards that run this province, the PLQ and the PQ, changed what was previously in the electoral law so that they would be the principal beneficiaries of my right to vote.

In the recently adopted amendment to the law, each name the appears on the electoral list is worth $1.50 and goes into a pot to be split up on the basis of percentage of the vote each party receives during the general election.

WTF?

That means that the lion's share of the state subsidy will go to the two political parties I detest.  If the PLQ gets 40% of the vote, they will get 60 cents each year because my name appears on the electoral list. 

The same goes for the PQ.  If they get 30% of the vote, they will receive 45 cents each year.

In total, the two political parties that refuse to change the voting system so that my vote might be effective in determining who gets to sit in Quebec's National Assembly by introducing a proportional voting system into the electoral process, actually use the principle of proportionality to fund themselves, and thereby keep the voting system from changing as they have done for the last forty years.

As a former candidate for the Quebec Green Party and a plaintiff in an unsuccessful suit against the Quebec Government to have the present voting system declared unconstitutional because it does not respect my right to participate meaningfully in the electoral process, a right supposedly protected by Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, I think you can understand that right about now I am feeling that I have been royally fucked over.

In short, in Quebec we have two political parties that control the province and have funded their campaigns largely on the basis of illegal donations and then rewrite the electoral laws for their benefit while systemically discriminating against the smaller political parties.

So much for any semblance of democracy.

I guess the only meaningful gesture left to me is to vote with my feet and get the fuck out of here.