Small P and Large P Politics and the F Word

At some point in my life while discussing voting with my father he recounted that prior to our immigrating to Canada in the 1970s, in UK elections he would go into the booth and scrawl "bollocks" across his ballot. It was his way of expressing his disillusionment with the politics in England at the time, which probably played a part in his and my mother's decision to leave the UK for Canada in 1974. For many years, I've argued that declining rates of electoral participation might not necessarily be a sign of apathy and disinterest in politics, for some non-voting might be a political choice -- it might very well be an act of protest. However, this is impossible to measure, as there is no indication you are "acting" politically or you are just uninterested and apathetic. How then does one "actively" display one's disillusionment or contempt for the process, candidates or parties? There is my father's solution, to walk into the pollin...

I started this blog back in 2014 after the Ontario election by discussing the number of women who ran and their success. This time I'm ahead o the ball, so today I'm giving you the lowdown on how many women are running, for which parties and where. Earlier this week, in honour of Mothers' Day, Andrea Horwath announced that more than 50% of the NDPs candidates were women (69 of 124 or 55.6%) ( http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ndp-liberals-pcs-women-election-voters-1.4661203 ). She praised the NDP for insuring that gender equity principles are part of the nomination process. To their credit the other mainstream parties have all increased the number of women running, this is even with the addition of 17 new ridings in this election. The percentage of women running for the Liberals has increased by 10% and the Progressive Conservatives have increased their number by 8%. The Greens come closest to the NDP running women in 64 of 125 ridings, according to a count of their w...