So. Election time.
It’s times like these that make me feel utterly unworldly and ignorant. No, I have not been following why Rob Ford’s mugshot appears in papers, nor why Sara Thompson dropped out of the race. While the rest of Toronto was obessing over the big 40-something percent of Nanos pre-election polls that put Rob Ford in the lead, I was contemplating the curious percentage of “Undecideds” (about 25%), who, like me, have no clue what’s going on.
Okay, okay. That’s just my speculation – I may be the only one that is clueless when it comes to political shenanigans, so someone please take pity, and explain to me why the results of pre-election research polls are even publicized. I mean, can’t people just wait till the actual elections are over to find out who won? This reminds me of the can’t-wait-till-Christmas-so-I-snuck-into-the-closet-and-opened-my-presents-early effect that kids and adults alike seem to exhibit.
Pre-election polls must influence people’s ultimate voting decisions, especially those of Undecideds like myself. I questioned some of my friends about who they would likely vote for, and found that their answers were suspiciously correlated with the type of support the candidates received as shown in the Nanos poll. If you are not really into politics or you don’t care one way or another, you have two main options: eenie-meenie-miney-moe it, or do what everyone else is doing and vote for the winner of the pre-election polls. It seems funny to me that there is such a stringent process to ensure that you get the utmost privacy when casting your ballot (presumably to ensure complete anonymity in order to allow people to vote for who they truly want without pressure from others) yet the pre-election opinions of your fellow citizens are being broadcasted for all the world to see. And no one seems to think this will pressure people? I’m sure, subconsciously or otherwise, people feel compelled to go with the front-runner as deemed by the rest of society. I mean, if so many people voted for this guy, he can’t possibly be a bad guy, right?
For me, this is a quadrennial moral dilemma. I usually stand at the polls, my hand hovering over each of the candidates in turn, wondering if my inclination toward a certain one is of my own doing or that of some subconscious, pre-election influence.
Shouldn’t we elect our leaders based on their merits and not their relative standings? If none of them measure up, shouldn’t there be a way for us to verbalize the inadequacy, rather than settling for one or the other? What if this year, I scratched out the candidates’ names and wrote, “Toronto deserves better! Who else you got?” If we don’t want to settle or don’t really care, shouldn’t we be allowed to abstain from voting without being ostracized? People who feel obliged to vote may look to the pre-election opinion poll results as a guideline for their own votes. Such votes skew the results in a near-unpredictable manner. I suppose this vote contamination is all in the name of the needs of the many. But is this what Toronto needs?
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