When I, a conscientious, informed non-voter, go to the polling station and receive my ballot, I intend to hand it back, saying “I reject the ballot.” The Deputy Returning Officer must then record this as a rejected ballot.  It is not counted as a spoiled ballet; neither is it a signifier of apathy!

What follows are many of the reasons why I plan to take this action. If you are of a mind to do likewise, look for those that ring true for you and use that as your intention if you decide to reject the ballot."

                                   ---------------------------------------------

I refuse to believe that democracy means always voting for the least of a number of evils. No candidate even comes close to representing my views. Even if one did, I believe that our democracy and the system it supports, not to mention the electoral system itself, is unfair, flawed, rigged, and unworkable:  It is competitive rather than cooperative, a debate rather than a negotiation, a dictatorship of the majority (and sometimes a minority!) rather than a collaboration of all, and it always results in the “same old same old.” The glaring discrepancy between what is said during elections and what is done between them means that nothing of what any of the parties say rings true to me in the slightest. 

The Big Lies are becoming so obvious.

Moreover, as always, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The closer any party gets to forming a government, the further from their original ideals they have inevitably strayed.

Governments are and always have been part of a ruling elite, a perpetual consortium of state, church, military and business, all determined to maintain their privileges and power, extend their influence, and increase their wealth, all the while repeating the public lie that they are mainly in power to serve the common people.

More than ever, governments are now in complete collusion with, and indistinguishable from, banks, big business and multinational corporations acting mostly above the law.

Whereas it has been said that “a nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members,” no party, ever, decade after decade, campaigns to address – first and foremost, before all other considerations – the problems and tribulations suffered by the poorest of the poor: the downtrodden and oppressed; the homeless and the addict; the welfare mother and the prostitute; first nation folks and part-time workers; prisoners and victims; immigrants and refugees; the emotionally devastated and the mentally damaged; indeed, by “every hung-up person in the whole wide universe.”

Neither is any party promising to “declare a state of emergency” and begin an immediate crash programme to address any of the following crises hurtling towards the people of Canada and the rest of the world:

-          global warming

-          ozone depletion

-          peak oil

-          overpopulation

-          nuclear waste

-          infrastructure deterioration 

-          earthquake upgrading

-          world-wide collapse of fisheries

-          top-soil erosion

-          deforestation

-          continuing pollution of air, water, and earth

-          the farm and food crisis

-          species extinction

-          human culture and language loss

-          fresh-water depletion

-          threatened watersheds

-          ocean acidification

-          the industrial cancer epidemic

-          the growing gap between the rich and the poor

-          out-of-control multinational corporations

-          inflated and obscene military spending

-          economic collapse;

Furthermore, and most essentially, no party is addressing the following intrinsic flaws of the planet-destroying economic system known as capitalism that is responsible for most of these huge problems:

            -          usury

            -          unlimited growth

-          unlimited profits

-         unlimited monopolization

-          share-holders

-          consumerism

-          built-in obsolescence 

Finally, I intend to reject the ballot because there are much more important and possible things for me to do than asking governments to create the world I want. We need to do that on our own initiative and together with small groups of like-minded folks.  We need to hurry up and grow our own food, build our own shelters, develop our own economies, live simpler, slower and smarter, and move towards our own small utopias - in short, to build new societies within the shells of the old.
 

(April 26, 2011)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Check...:http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/17/democracy_uprising_in_the_usa_noam
 

Check: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/17/democracy_uprising_in_the_usa_noam