the flying squirrel

I totally fail.

Or somebody does.

I was hunting everywhere last week and over the weekend to try to figure out when the stupid all-candidates meeting was for my riding. I figured people just haven’t gotten around to organizing it yet and it would emerge in due course. Then I got a couple items in the feed this morning telling me that the damn thing was yesterday. Poop.

(I also missed my chance to pick up the Sontaran Stratem Set yesterday, not that that’s terribly relevant to the discussion. Epic fail all 'round for me, though).

From the reports, though, I probably wouldn’t have got a seat, which means Ellen and I almost certainly wouldn’t have been able to stay. This sounds like a shoddy, half-assed excuse for a democratic exercise if you ask me.

Even if a candidate knocked on my door, I almost certainly wouldn’t be there. Those things are useless to me. I need stuff like these meetings to figure out who these people are to make any sort of useful decision.

Video from the event, though, will be broadcast on Rogers TV over the next week, if I can figure out how to see it without cable TV.

If you happen to live in one of the other ridings in the region, your meeting is upcoming. Check the Rogers site for dates and times.

Maybe there’ll be another meeting (probably revolving around some special interest or other) in the coming weeks.

Hey, remember the definitive Penny Arcade comic on Twitter. Yeah.

Well, apparently Jack Layton has a Twitter account too.

(Given there’s no corroboration anywhere, I’m betting that’s a photoshop job, but it’s still funny).

While I’m happy that a raft of shitty Conservative legislation dies on the floor today (copyright reform bill C-61 included), I’m not entirely thrilled at the prospect an election.

Rather than ranting, I thought it might be useful to outline my algorithm for choosing a candidate to vote for. It’s hand-tweaked, but it has served me well for a few elections now. It goes something like this:

def vote(Candidates):

    voteFor = nobody

    # If there are any super-awesome candidates,
    # vote for the best one.

    for candidate in Candidates:

        if isSuperAwesome(candidate):
            if candidate > voteFor:
                voteFor = candidate

    if voteFor != nobody:
        return voteFor


    # Otherwise, run through the list of parties in
    # order or personal preference, excluding
    # Conservatives.

    for party in ['Liberal', 'Green', 'NDP']:

        if not totallySucks(Candidates[party]):
            return Candidates[party]

    # Otherwise, stay home.
    # TODO: should I have a fall-back to vote for
    # a mediocre indepentant?  Not that it matters
    # at this point...

    return nobody

If you can’t read Python, I apologize. Just read the comments (the bits after the #s) and you should be okay.

I have reasons for all the decision points, but I think, if you’ve been following long enough, you may already have a decent idea what they are. I like to think I follow a healthy mix of strategic voting and ideology. And I won’t vote for a candidate that totally sucks on principle, no matter what their party affiliation is.

I’ll make myself go through the candidates and talk about them at some point in the next month and a bit.