I remember the very first time I went to vote. I was 19 years old, I lived in British Columbia and the election was Provincial.
Ah. Do we ever forget the first time we practice that wonderful thing called Democracy?
I knew all the Candidates, what they stood for, all the issues and had even asked God who he thought I should chose.
I was R-E-A-D-Y!
My older brother and mother came with me. We made it a special event. The first time we would all vote together as a family.
As my brother was driving us home he asked me, “So, Laura? How did you vote? Did you vote the right way?”
I responded, “Absolutely! The Rhino Party across the board!”
He flipped his head around to look at me in the back seat and almost gave himself whiplash.
“You’re kidding, right?” He asked quite intensely.
I just smiled. And hummed a little tune.
At that moment I realized one of the best parts about my vote. It’s MINE. All mine. Nobody can make me vote a certain way because they will never know if I’ve actually done it. It’s between me, my conscience and my God. (How many things can you say that about?)
It’s what our wars are fought over. It’s what people died to preserve (and are still dying for). It’s a sacred thing.
Now I should say that my brother loves politics. So around election time he gets a real gleam in his eye. How many times did he explain to me why I had to vote a certain way?
“Listen Laura. You’re not getting it. If you vote Liberal and I vote Conservative, our votes will cancel each other out and neither of our parties will win. So let’s get together and chose to vote the same way. My way.”
But come election day all I had to say was, “So, who is the Rhino candidate?” and my brother would start having chest pains.
To this day I don’t think he knows whether I’m joking or whether I actually voted Rhino. (And I’m not telling.)
But as time has gone by and I’ve seen election after election, (Civic, Provincial, Federal) I’ve become very disillusioned. I’ve come to hate politics. I actually have a saying about it that demonstrates my feelings:
“Politics is like a toilet bowl. No matter how clean it is, I still don’t want to drink from it!”
But I still continued to vote, although at some point I stopped voting for who I believed in and started voting for who I thought would do the least damage. Or who I thought had lied the least. Definitely a case of “the lesser of two evils”.
I even had a plan once to organize a “Spoiled Ballot Protest”. It was back in the days when you went to vote and they crossed your name off the “Voters Registration List” to show that you had showed up to vote, then they gave you the ballot and you would make your mark beside your candidate of choice on a little private area. But with my idea, instead of picking a candidate, you would purposely spoil your ballot by writing “None of the Above”.
I figured that if the “High Powers” discovered that 90% of the people turned up to vote but 85% of the ballots were spoiled, then they would know it wasn’t an accident or mistake. Yet, because our ballots are private, they would have no way of knowing who actually spoiled their ballots. So it wouldn’t have been a protest of individuals, but rather it would have been a group of people fed up. They would have gotten the message: “We want to vote. Now give us someone worth voting for!”
Now all that has changed. It happened in my city just a few short years ago. I walked to my local polling station (the nearby Elementary School), they crossed my name off the Registered List, (to show I had come), they gave me my ballot, I went behind that secret little cardboard screen, I cast my vote, and brought it to the lady with the boxes with the slit in the top so I could put my vote in, then watch her cover up the slit again with a copy of the Bible.
(“But, what’s this? Where are the boxes? The slits? The Bible?!”)
This particular time, a lady reached out and took my paper with my “secret” vote on it, looked at it, then she placed it into a contraption that looked like a fax machine. It sucked in my paper (like a fax machine), then spit it out the other side (like a fax machine). A little green light lit up on this Election Machine, then she took my ballot and right before my eyes, … SHREDDED IT!
She told me my vote had been counted and I was free to go.
I think I stood there for a few seconds with a dumb look on my face. But she told me again that I could leave and, God help me, I did. Without one word of protest.
On the short walk home all I could think was, “I should have said something. Maybe ‘Baa, Baa’, because I acted like a stupid sheep.”
She actually looked at who I voted for!
How do I know my vote was even counted?
How do I know that someone isn’t going to just tamper with the machine and the results?
How could I stand there and let her shred my ballot? My “sacred” ballot?
Now my government (and many others) are going to be fully automated by the next election. You will be able to vote online too.
They tell us it will be secure. (And because the Government said so, it must be true, because no hacker could ever break into a government computer)
And, of course, no hacker could ever have access to MY computer to discover who I voted for and perhaps change it.
And, of course, no one in the Government who has access to those computers would ever do anything crooked or immoral or unethical.
Because, as you know, politicians are known for their high scruples and morals. (Okay. Enough sarcasm for the moment.)
But what if they need a re-count? How does that work? Do they get somebody else to come over and read the computer screen?
“Yup. It’s says you won alright.”
They say they HAVE to do it this way because there is such a poor voter turn out. But I promise you, if there is someone worth voting for, the turn out would be massive.
Also, this way, (so says the Government ) the results of the election will be almost instantaneous.
But there’s just one basic truth that all the double-speak in the world can’t get around:
“It’s easier to hit a delete button than it is to dispose of millions and millions of pieces of paper”
If my ballot is gone, my secrecy is gone, my right to choose without any undue influence is gone, my freedom is gone. My sacred vote is gone. Democracy is gone. But no big deal, right?
“Well, Bro. I guess you’ll finally know who I’m voting for. Just like everyone else will”
Now it may just be my opinion, but I wouldn’t mind waiting a few more hours (or days) to find out the results, if it meant that the people we REALLY voted for were going to be our leaders.
Just like some things are worth fighting for, some things are worth waiting for. Privacy, Democracy and Freedom are just a few of those things.
(From now on I suppose my new saying about politics will be:
“Baa. Baa.”)
