Four More Years

Well, the results are in and Harper has somehow secured a majority government. I'm actually surprised that they obtained a majority, mainly due to vote of no-confidence in parliament, but this is how it all played out. In all honesty, I can definitely handle the conservatives winning, but I find it odd that Harper is still allowed to lead the party.

At the very least you would think the conservative party would remove Harper as the figurehead based on the previous allegations against him and the vote of no-confidence. But given that Harper's government renovated the Parliament Buildings and replaced photos of old prime ministers with photos of Harper, I have a feeling that there's definitely some ego involved here.

Regardless, the best news in all of this is that we as Canadians don't have to endure another election for four years. Not the result that I ultimately was after, but it is apparently what the majority of Canadians who voted wanted.

Many people are calling for reform, since Harper secured a majority government with only 40% of the popular vote. It is a dated system, and one that's probably in need of an overhaul. But, it's the system we currently have, and those are the results.

My only real complaint with the whole process was what I observed here in Chilliwack. There were two lines at the polling station, one for people that had voting cards and one for people without. Maybe I don't know how the process works, but I sort of thought we were all to receive them in the mail. I can still receive mail from my old address out here, and I never received one. Many other people in line also didn't have cards, and so all of us were forced to go into the second line, which was for people who didn't have a voter card.

When asked how long it would take to get through the line one of the volunteers responded that it was roughly a half-hour long. At that point many people groaned, and about three or four people just left. I didn't watch the back of the line once I was in it, but I imagine more people left, and that's a shame. On one hand those people probably should have stayed, but on the other it's hard not to blame the process for making it time consuming. The whole purpose of that line was simply to look in a set of books and let each person know which desk to go to inside the polling station. Since there was no personal information in those books, there's really no reason why a whack of them couldn't have been placed out on the halls for people to browse through on their own. Some people probably would have still needed help, but many of us could have easily thumbed through it and saved ourselves a 30 minute wait.

But I'm at least happy I made the drive out to Chilliwack to cast my vote and take part in our democratic process, even though my party didn't end up out in front.