British Columbia is having an election Tuesday the 17th. I won’t be there because I’m taking a plane out at 7AM, so on the weekend I took the kid off to the advance poll. I thought I’d turn it into a civics lesson, but a parliamentary election turns out to have too many levels to explain easily. He got the idea about picking a name and marking an “X” beside it, though. In BC there are two parties that matter, the Liberals (their website is wonky in Safari, bah) and the NDP. In American terms, the Liberals are approximately moderate Republicans and the NDP approximately liberal Democrats. The last NDP government was incredibly bad and the voters got so irritated they elected a legislature with the Liberals holding 77 of 79 seats. The NDP has gotten rid of most of the clueless schemers from last time around and while they aren’t expected to win, we should have a better-balanced legislature after the election. Also the Green Party is looking strong and may elect a few members this time, which I think would be healthy. In our riding, the Liberals are running a boring marketing exec while the NDP has a boyish entrepreneur (creator of Happy Planet juices. Along with these two, the Greens, and an independent, we had candidates from the Work Less Party (Workers of the World - RELAX!) and the Sex Party. Seems like these last two should contemplate a merger.
