10.14.2008

Environment vote sites need a grain of salt

Be careful with the voter advisory sites...

Look at the riding of Thunder Bay-Rainy River. Its a race this time between the Conservative and NDP. Vote for Climate says vote for the Liberal MP, Ken Boshcoff. This despite a warning stating,
"if you decide to support Ken Boshcoff this election, you should still make him earn his vote! MP Boshcoff has not been the most ardent supporter of his party's climate change plan, and he needs to know that you are sending him back to Ottawa to get on with the serious work of cutting greenhouse gas emissions."

Anything but Conservative site says Vote NDP in this riding. And Vote for the Environment says "You Choose" and then goes on to tell us this...
"This is a tough one given this could easily be a three way race. Liberal Ken Boshcoff is the incumbent, but current polling puts the NDP in the lead with the Conservatives close behind. It will be important to avoid a NDP Liberal split with the Conservatives coming up the middle, so please check in later as we try to get some local intelligence as this race progresses."

I did check back later, election day morning, and still no recommendation here.

All indications show that the NDP candidate is likely to win. Why no recommendation on Vote for the environment given the Liberal candidate's lack luster support for environment and why is vote for climate saying vote Liberal given their own stated reservations.

3 comments:

susansmith said...

Because the site is owned by a Liberal, and strategic voting is all about voting liberal. Jerks!

Jaytoo said...

Exactly. There are several national "strategic voting" indexes out there that seem to work the same way. They call all the obvious races correctly. They call some of the squeakers honestly. But then they skew another portion dishonestly towards the Liberals.

These sites are like slot machines. They create a sense of impartiality and "winnability." And some people will indeed "win" by playing. But they're rigged so the house (Liberal Party) always wins at the end of the day.

But only if you play.

I don't doubt that many people are using these sites in good faith. In that sense, these sites are fundamentally abusive.

Anonymous said...

They mean well, they seem to have an agenda of electing lots of Liberals however.