If You Don't Vote, You're Probably An Asshole.

True to form, Stephen Harper decided to inconvenience me as much as possible by calling an election exactly one month to the date that I’m due to return to Canada. The good news is that this is not 1908, and I still have time to vote (by mail-in ballot). The bad news is that I have to vote; I consider all options different, but nearly equally awful. I’ve considered spoiling my ballot, but won’t. Who I will probably end up voting for and why is completely irrelevant to my point, which is: If you don’t vote, you’re probably an asshole. Here’s why:

62.8% of registered voters showed up to vote over the past two federal elections. That leaves roughly 8.5 million registered voters, per election, who just couldn’t be fucking bothered to vote. Roughly 7.5 million of those can be found around your office or local supermarket whining about how their taxes are too high, gas is too expensive, they know a guy who knows a guy that had to wait 36 hours at the Emergency Room to get his arm sewed back on, and their child shares a classroom with several dozen other students. I invite you to punch each and every one of these 7.5 million people in the face.

The 37.2% of registered voters who couldn’t be bothered to cast a ballot over the past two elections held in their hands, collectively, the power to make our country a different place. Instead, they sat idly on their hands, and let the rest of us handle the task of deciding who should map the course for our country over the next little while. Then, a good number of these people got off of their hands so that they could wave them around as they bitched endlessly about the results of our choices. Are you fucking kidding me?

People who just can’t be fucking bothered to vote have been known to present a myriad of terrible excuses, including (but not limited to) the following:

I don’t care.
I don’t like the available choices.
The polling station is too far away.
I work that day.
My vote won’t make a difference.

Some people truly don’t care. I am 100% behind their right to not bother voting this year. Those who truly don’t care, don’t bitch when the rest of us vote in an inept government. They’re exempt from deserving a punch in the fact. As for the rest:

Many of us bitch about our so-called choices. If you truly hate all of your options, then you have the choice to either select the lesser evil (also known as the party which is most aligned with your priorities), or spoil your ballot. While I don’t generally condone spoiling your ballot, as it has the same direct result as not voting at all, at least you’ve made the effort to demonstrate that you’re not apathetic; you just think that the choices suck.

Many of us live far away from our scheduled polling booth. As I noted earlier, this is not 1908. One month is more than enough time for you to sign up for a mail-in ballot. Few people are further away from their polling booth than I am, and I’m still going to vote. So boo fucking hoo.

Work is not an excuse. Even if you happen to have one of those jobs that requires you to work for the entire period of time that the polling stations are open, in Canada your employer is required to give you some time off during the day so that you can go cast a vote. Problem solved.

The “my vote won’t make a difference” crowd deserves not one, but two punches in the face. They are the absolute worst offenders among those who can’t be bothered to vote. These are people who have an opinion, but would rather sit around and wallow in self pity that their riding is too conservative/liberal for their widdle liberal/conservative heart to bear, than cast a vote for a candidate who is unlikely to be victorious. What these people fail to take into consideration is that, while their individual vote won’t make up the thousands of votes needed, if they and the other million people that are sitting around sad that their party of choice didn’t get enough hugs this year would just bother to fucking vote, the outcome of the overall election may very well have been different.

Tomorrow I will be faxing in my information to the Canadian Government, in the hopes that they’ll get a mail-in ballot package back to me in time for me to turn it around and get it back to them by October 14. I don’t trust them to succeed in this, but I will at least know that I’ve done absolutely everything I can to ensure that I cast a ballot in the federal election. If I don’t vote in this election, “The Canadian Government failed to ship my mail-in ballot package before the election was held” is a damn good excuse.