Federal Election Face Palm
No quiz, test or exam has made me feel as stupid as the federal election.
This post is not to share my political views. I am not well enough informed to have political views anyway. I have a hard enough time navigating my own values; comparing them to the beliefs of political parties seems nearly impossible.
What I found out:
- The polls are open for 12 hours on Monday October 19th (7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.)
- I double-checked that I am registered to vote at https://ereg.elections.ca/.
I also took a quiz designed to compare your values to each political party: https://canada.isidewith.com/political-quiz.
I felt very uninformed on many of the following issues:
- “Should Canada switch to a proportional representation voting system?”
- “Should post-secondary education be a provincial or federal responsibility?”
- “Should the government use economic stimulus to aid the country during times of recession?”
- “Do you support Bill C-51?”
The list goes on and on. These are supposedly important issues – issues that I don’t know anything about. The results of the quiz were also ambiguous and unhelpful.
Trying to research for the election has brought into question my understanding of: politics, the economy, marijuana, taxes, security, the senate, democratic reform, the economy, coalitions, pensions, climate change, health care, the economy, defense, Iraq, Syria, and pipelines.
How can I learn more? Seriously… any suggestions? Hopefully I will have another post with my journey to becoming informed.
Here’s another quiz to show how your values align with the political parties: http://www.votecompass.com/.
I really have the same feelings here! I guess the easiest way would be figure out the local MP candidate in your riding, check their profiles and their facebook website and see which party candidate/platform resonates with your personal interests( for me might be, immigration, TPP, CPP and tuition fees) Hope my advice would help! Not sure if you have already voted at the advance polls
Yeah I am just about to write another post about how i figured out who to vote for. I ended up switching to voting in Victoria because I have a better idea of the MP candidates than in my home town. The MP candidates also had a debate on campus which was pretty awesome.
As far the specifics of how my personal interests and values line up issues like immigration, TPP, CPP and tuition fees I don’t think I understand those topics well enough to make a voting decision based on them.
I hope lots of students get out to vote!