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TOD’S RANT
BALLOT OF THE DAMNED

Election season. That magical time every few years when we all get together to choose who should run the country—by conducting a nationwide group project in Excel, cross-referencing three vote-splitting websites, a blog post from 2017, and a guy named Brent on Reddit, all to figure out how to vote for the party that’s statistically least likely to not lose while accidentally helping the party you hate win by slightly less.

Canadian democracy. It’s Sudoku with consequences.

Let’s talk about vote splitting.

Here, lately, it’s been when the left vote is scattered among the 647 left-leaning parties in this country, and whoever is the Conservative wins by default. Like three friends arguing over pizza toppings—two say pepperoni, one says pineapple, and somehow you all get stuck with gluten-free vegan crust and existential regret.

But let’s be clear: vote splitting is not a bug in our system. It is the system. It’s the fine print on the ballot. 

Some people suggest the left wing parties should just merge. One candidate to represent everyone from eco-socialists to moderate centrists. I mean, what could possibly go wrong when vegans, pipeline pragmatists, and tax-the-rich poets all share a campaign bus?

So, what’s our solution been so far?

Strategic voting. Casting your ballot not for the candidate you support, but for the one most likely to beat the candidate you fear. It's more like political Tinder than democracy. You swipe left on the raging dumpster fire and vote for the guy whose main policy idea is “bring back Vine.”

Fix the system, not the symptoms.

The core flaw isn’t indecisive voters—it’s that under first-past-the-post, voting for your favorite candidate can hand victory to your least favorite.

So, what alternatives do we have?

• Ranked-choice voting is like The Bachelor, but for politics. You list your favorites in order, and if your top pick gets voted out, your love rebounds to your next choice—no rose ceremony required. The least popular candidate is booted each round until someone wins the majority and we can all pretend it was true love from the start. Ireland, Australia, Sri Lanka, and more than 50 jurisdictions in the U.S. use this method.

• Approval voting is even simpler—each voter can select as many candidates as they want, rather than being restricted to just one choice. Voters simply mark all the candidates they find acceptable on their ballot. The candidate who receives the most approvals wins the election. Fair enough, it’s not used widely: Latvia has a modified version, the UN uses it to elect the Secretary-General, and it’s how the elections used to work in Fargo, North Dakota until a few days ago.

• There’s Runoff Voting where if no one gets a majority, we vote again: a sequel nobody asked for, starring the same candidates, only now everyone’s slightly angrier.

• Cumulative Voting where you get multiple votes, sort of like points, and can dump them all on your favourite or spread them out. Basically, legal vote hoarding.

• Score Voting has voters rating each candidate from 0 to 5 like you’re leaving a Yelp review. Highest rating wins.

• The Single Transferable Vote: Voters rank candidates. If their #1 has no chance or their #1 has too many votes, their ballot gets redistributed.

• And about a million more.

God knows anything is better than the disaster we have.

Yet here we are, every election, hoping math and luck will save us from ourselves.

Let’s end this nonsense.

We don’t need to tweak this system—we need to throw it in the ditch and light it on fire.

First-past-the-post is a relic from the 18th century, like powdered wigs or treating syphilis with mercury. It rewards mediocrity, punishes ambition, and elects people no one asked for.

It’s not democracy. It’s a hostage negotiation with ballots. And we do it every single time.

Now that the election is over, let’s pressure them to change this damn thing. For real, this time, not just a campaign promise that gets abandoned.

Because we don’t need more voter turnout PSAs.

We need a ballot that doesn’t play Minesweeper with democracy.

The Election 🗳️

• The CBC explains why it took them to the next morning to declare that the Liberals won a minority government (when other networks like CTV called it election night.

• At Levack Public School in Sudbury, Grade 5/6 students held a mock election. Top campaign issues: Longer recess and better quality microwaves. I also would vote for this, frankly.

• A Liberal volunteer flashed his middle fingers at a photographer during a Mark Carney rally. The photo went viral and now he’s dealing with the fallout and online abuse.

• Come on, guys. Elections Canada apologized to voters in Nunavik who were unable to cast a vote in Monday's federal election. Several Nunavik polling stations closed early or didn't open at all.

Weird but Canadian 🧪

• Who steals grain?! About 5,000 bushels of grain were stolen from unattended storage bins in Saskatchwan. Big grain thefts are rare but often unnoticed on rural properties.

• One Edmonton Oilers fan is crocheting cute Oilers-themed chickens to help with playoff stress. These cozy, weighted “emotional support” chickens are perfect, she says, for squishing and tossing during tense games. After a great social media response, she’s selling them for $20 each and plans to launch a website soon.

• The Stink Will Go On. Calgary International Airport is dealing with a nasty rotten-egg smell caused by glycol used to de-ice planes, which ends up in nearby ponds and sticks around for years. The airport says they’re working on a $5M fix, but it’ll be years before it’s ready.

News You Should Know 📰

• Five months after the end of a nationwide strike, Canada Post workers could be returning to the picket lines as early as May 22 when the current collective agreements expire.

Science News You Missed 🧪

• At the London Marathon, a startup called Peequal uses special female port-a-potties to collect urine, which is then turned into fertilizer. The urine could fertilize enough wheat to make 3,000 loaves of bread.

• A baby, born with her heart outside her body, underwent a groundbreaking 9-hour surgery. Surgeons reshaped her ribs to protect her heart, a procedure never done before in the UK.

Oops… 😨

• Somebody’s gettin’ fired… A Dutch town hall accidentally threw out a famous 1980s Andy Warhol silkscreen print. It was mistaken for bulky waste generated during renovations.

The Dystopian Hellscape 🔥

• European researchers secretly ran a 4-month AI experiment on Reddit’s “Change My View” community, using bots with fake identities to sway opinions. The bots even researched people to see how best to exploit them.

• An interesting long-read for your weekend: The Politics of “Common Sense” Is Making Us Meaner.

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