Are you a Green in a "strategic" voting riding? Try this instead

Recently this party has been batting around political strategy in full force. Should we merge with another party? Form an electoral coalition? Vote "strategically"? Or do our best and work hard to build the Green Party?

In some close ridings it has been advocated that the best way to cause change is to vote "strategically."

You can give that a try if you want. It was tried in 2008 and didn't work, in fact it failed miserably.

So if you want you can tell all your volunteers to go home.  Call all your donors and tell them "no thanks!" There's someone else they should vote for and you'd be glad to tell them who that is!

It might work, but in the end nobody has ever come forward saying how great! empowered and enthusiastic they feel about voting "strategically."

Instead they feel like they settled for second best, held their nose and voted, or chose the lesser of two evils.  The lesser of two evils is still evil! And by voting "strategically" they gave up whatever voting power they had and sent mixed messages to politicians.

Or is there something else you can try? Maybe a "right" hook?

Say the difference in your riding was only a few hundred votes. That's not much to make up.  Polls have shown that 10-15% of Conservatives would pick the Green Party as their second choice(also, about 10% of Greens would choose the Conservatives 2nd). That means all you have to do is find a few hundred former Progressive Conservatives to vote Green. And you've avoided the "strategic" voting fiasco.

There are two ways to make gains in politics. Increase your vote or decrease that of your opponent.  Getting PCs to vote Green achieves both at the same time.

As a Green you can use these talking points:
Green policies are meant to be revenue neutral and we value Fiscal Responsibility
The Green Party has attracted many working in Green and small business
We are a grassroots party and don't believe in large centralized decision making
We want to reduce payroll and income tax and introduce income splitting for families
Maybe there is another point you can add?

Or maybe try this?

If you're in a typical riding, you probably had 40% of people not vote in the last election.

Why? Were they disenchanted with the system? Couldn't find a political party that suited them? Were they a first time young voter or maybe new to Canada?

With 40% of the vote "did not vote" actually won the last election! This means you have an extremely large group of people from which to draw.  Again, if you can find a few hundred people that can be drawn into the political system then you can shift the direction of your riding.  There is some anecdotal evidence that this is what Obama was able to do.  Instead of fighting the battle with those who already voted he energized a whole new group of people to get involved and completely changed the composition of the electorate.

So you have some options. Use all the tools at your disposal. Those include:

1. Working hard and smart and using community organizing, to build the Green Party

2. Some form of merger/coalition, before or after an election

3. Working across parties to get proportional representation adopted

It has been mentioned that some people are desperate and really want to see change now.  I hope we can step back from the edge a bit, collect our thoughts, and choose an electoral strategy that realizes we don't have that much power right now, and doesn't damage our long term future.

It has been mentioned before that those who post most on blogs are those least involved in building their local riding EDA.  I've said my piece and now it's time to get back to the more important work.

Sincerely,

Matthew Piggott
Kitchener Centre