Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s just Election Day jitters. But a very unscientific straw poll of voters in Carleton found a good many who wouldn’t discuss Monday’s election, and certainly not on the record.
A clue as to why came from a 65-year-old bearded man (“65-year-old bearded man in Carleton riding” is not descriptive enough to blow his cover).
“I better not give you my name,” he said as he entered Frederick Banting Alternative School to vote. “I don’t want to get in a fight with my whole family.”
“Oh?”
“I’m not voting the way they all are.”
“How are THEY voting?”
“Not blue,” he answered.
And there it was. Carleton riding, which Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has held since 2004 and which just months ago might have been the safest seat in Ottawa, is now reportedly the only really competitive race in the city, with Liberal candidate Bruce Fanjoy hoping to rain on Poilievre’s reign. Is this tightening race threatening familial harmony among Carleton’s electorate?
If so, it wasn’t something for which this hirsute gentleman was willing to reconsider his decision. Instead, he’d just stay nameless.
“There’s something about (Liberal leader) Mark (Carney),” he said. “You know how some people make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end? That’s what he does to me.”
If voters in the riding agreed on one thing, though, it was that a ballot with 91 candidates’ names on it is ridiculously irritating.
One woman (nameless, no beard) said she went to vote, but couldn’t find Poilievre’s name on the cluttered ballot, and so simply returned her ballot, unmarked, and left. When I asked her if the names were listed alphabetically, she said she didn’t know.
“This election is already rigged,” she insisted.
Another resident (middle-aged, male, beard) who wouldn’t give his name because it wouldn’t sit well where he worked, entered the voting booth only certain that he wouldn’t vote for either Fanjoy or Poilievre. “I hate both parties,” he said. “Carney seems like a nice guy, but he’s a banker. And the NDP are a joke. So my vote will be a protest vote.”
And this, when he came out: “That was a long ballot, but I found someone — the Marijuana Party.”
Voter Steve Blackwell, meanwhile, supplied his name but not which of the 91 candidates earned his “X”. National issues, including the noise from the U.S., played a role in his decision. “I think we’re looking further out more than close by,” he said, noting that he would have welcomed a viable candidate or party beyond “the lesser of two evils.”
At Bernard-Grandmaitre Catholic Elementary School, Soumya Dey and Shibani Sharma eagerly voted for the first time in Canada. Emigrés from India six years ago, the new Canadians said it was important to them to vote.
“It’s very easy to lose confidence in democracy and voting,” said Dey, “but at the same time, it becomes all the more important. It’s a drop in an ocean,n but it’s important.”
Sharma, his wife, pointed to the U.S. as an example of how an election can completely change a country’s political landscape. It’s important to select a good leader, she said, because Canada’s future depends on it.
Stittsville’s Mélanie Chrétien, meanwhile, happily supplied both her name and that of the candidate who got her vote — Fanjoy — noting that it was the race’s competitiveness that pushed her to the polling station.
She’s seen what she believes is an unfortunate widening gap between the two main parties’ positions. “And the ones you hear the most are the louder ones, and they’re usually further to the right.
“I’m voting,” she added, “because it’s such a close riding. Living in Stittsville for five or six years, it’s a very blue area. I mean, it’s been Pierre Poilievre’s area. But a lot of people have been moving into the area — people with more diverse values and positions — and it’s becoming more red. So I feel that my vote will actually matter this time, instead of just being a wash before.”
With Maia Tustonic
