Strategic Vote Swapping

I was up late last night, working on the internet, trying to swap my vote for Tuesday’s election. When I first heard about this modern way of voting, I thought, why not? I figured my local MP will return to office with a comfortable majority so he did not need my vote. If I could persuade someone in another riding that I would exchange votes with them, why not make my vote and some stranger’s vote count for more? This could be the start of proportional representation!

Now, I know I vowed not to vote for Harper since he called this needless election, but I got more responses from conservatives than anyone else, perhaps because the word must be out that this is a ‘close’ riding where the blue might steal it from the red. So I played dumb and said sure I would vote for the blue if they would vote for the green for me in their riding. The green being no threat in most ridings, my swap vote was quickly accepted. Not by just one person, but sixteen!

Sure, I know you are supposed to vote only once, but how gullible are these people? I was careful to keep changing my first name in case anybody cross-checked my swaps. Sometime next week they will realize that there must be a lot of Waltons in North Bay, but by then it will be too late. This was working so well for the blue, I thought why not go after the oranges? Jack has been pushing hard in the north, so maybe there are some disillusioned orange voters down near that Generous Motors plant who would vote green for me.

Sure enough, I found eight of them who said they figured Jack’s candidate had blown it in their riding so they might as well try to vote strategically. I even got four former oranges from out west where their candidate had dropped out due to some bad habits picked up out in the BC alternate farming area. They seemed to think that green was the way to go, so I said sure, I’d vote orange for them.

I had to turn down a famer from Kansas who offered to vote red for me if I’d vote blue for him, but I said there was no way I was going to go near that Palin character.

This strategic voting takes time but I was into getting out the vote, as they say on election day. My argument to the swappers was that I wanted them to vote green so Elizabeth would have more money to work with next time. The more votes she gets, the bigger her allowance next election. Those train tickets sure do add up. And I figure the minority Liberal government won’t last that long. You need a tough boss to keep your minority gang all on the same page and I’m not sure Stephane can keep the knives out of his back.

You would be amazed at the number of closet reds there are in Calgary! I promised thirteen of them I would vote red here if they would go green out there. I only got seven takers – it seems the oil patch people are a little afraid of the greens. I was about to say I would vote blue here but my wife came downstairs to see why I wasn’t in bed.

I tried to explain to her how this whole vote swapping thing worked on the internet but she is a bit of a Luddite when it comes to the power of the internet. I tried explaining how this was so great for democracy but when she saw the list of my vote promises she had another word for it. With one push of her finger, she shut down the whole system. Furthermore, she said I had better not cancel her vote this time or there would be more than vote swapping going on in our house!

I was thinking of reviving the old ‘lend me your vote’ routine that Jack tried last election, but with the current borrowing crisis on everyone’ mind, I passed on that idea. Anyway, be sure to vote on Tuesday. Vote early and vote often, as Merle used to say....