Editor, The Times:
Progressive voters need to start electorally acting like the fiscal conservative voters, who—in most cases that I’ve witnessed in the last three decades of voting municipally, provincially and federally—will manage to unite as a block to avoid splitting their money-first-minded vote.
The last Vancouver council seat by-election was won by the sole fiscally conservative NPA candidate by a relatively minute percentage, as the large majority center-to-left votes got handily divided amongst five parties.
Granted, that victorious candidate has since created his own fiscally conservative entity, which theoretically should somewhat make up for the above-mentioned voting-block lopsidedness.
Federally there have been three major parties—the right-wing Conservative party and the left-wing Liberal and NDP entities, the latter two of which tend to (conveniently for the former) split the progressive vote.
In B.C. we witnessed this in last year’s provincial election, which almost saw the nauseating repeat re-election of an increasingly corrupt conservative Liberal party government.
The progressive-vote majority got divided between the Greens and NDP, while the effectively united-right Liberal party—as they were competing with the Christian Heritage Party in only five ridings, and 10 ridings with the BC Conservative party—was allowed to squeeze up the middle. (And pretty much the same goes for the recent PC win in Ontario.)
Regardless of this reality, some commentators disingenuously suggested post-election that the Green party had acted as a spoiler or swing vote for either side of the political spectrum (i.e. the BC Liberals or the NDP), as though a notable number of Green votes could’ve been taken from the conservative Liberals.
Frank Sterle Jr.,
White Rock, B.C.
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