Ah yes, another election. We have managed to pack animal, vegetable, and mineral, otherwise known as municipal, federal, and provincial into the past year so it's not just our imaginations that we have been asked to cast our ballots a lot lately. And it's not just here in Ontario. P.E.I just wrapped up its provincial election on Monday and Manitobans went to the polls yesterday. Next Tuesday it's Newfoundland and Labrador's turn.
For whom or what should we vote Thursday in Ontario? The Liberals have made some bad mistakes during eight years in power but they have experience in turbulent times. The Conservatives are grumpy and the major alternative in popular opinion, but I'm waiting for them to say something other than that the Liberals are fiends. The NDP have a likable but unseasoned leader who seems to be promising too much. The Greens are simply not in contention.
It would be easy to just stay at home but I won't, and I hope you won't either. I really don't like to go to the polling station holding my nose, but I feel that if I choose not to vote I'm giving way to apathy and cynicism, as the graffiti above suggests. Neither of these are Christian. I am in the hope business as a Christian leader, but it is also essential to our way of life as Jesus' followers. As I've said before, there was no such thing as democracy in his time, at least not as we know it, yet the freedom to choose for a greater good is surely an outcome of his vision of God's reign and universal justice.
Are you feeling a little jaded about elections in general? Will you cast your ballot, or did you given at least one reader in Manitoba? Do you connect being a person of faith with the freedom and responsibility of voting?
I have already voted and will be working on election day as a poll clerk (as I have in the other two elections in the past year). I have had relatives die so that I could vote and we have lost military men and women overseas so that all people (men and women and all social classes)can be educated and vote. As jaded as I am, the ability to vote is too precious to waste on apathy. Although, I feel that voter turnout will be very low and we could be back at the polls within a couple of years.
ReplyDeleteHolding my nose for sure;)
ReplyDeleteI feel like I will vote against parties/leaders rather than for anyone ....a block vote... seems like I am holding my nose.
ReplyDeleteVoting, and with mixed feelings. Our Grade 5 students cast their votes today for the local candidates in the Whitby riding. I was a poll clerk and counted the votes which we submit on-line along with another 40,000 Ontario students. It will be very interesting to see if the results here at school with 49 students are the actual riding results. My gut tells me they will be. Will have to wait until Friday morning.
ReplyDeleteSusan nailed it with reference to the dead and the freedoms they fought for. Well said, all around!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Ian about the comments. I was there at nine this morning to cast my vote and it wasn't so bad after all!
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