about Laurel L. Russwurm

…daughter… sister …aunt… cousin …wife… mother …writer…

… it is always possible to change the world …
even if the only thing you can change is yourself.

I do not have a political science degree. I’m just a citizen. A citizen who believes that we seriously need electoral reform. I’m not a member of any party, I’m just looking for answers. There has to be a better way.

I’ll admit it, I don’t like the idea of political parties. I don’t like the fact that elected representatives can be told by the party hierarchy to ignore what is best for their constituents and vote the way the party tells them to. Right there citizens of a democracy lose their voice.

Even worse, an absurd quantity of citizens lack any representation at all. Not because they don’t vote, but because their candidates just miss getting elected. Like the Green Party for instance. If all their cross country votes were added up they should have seats in parliament. Yet they have nary a one. And of course many of their ideas have been poached by the “alternating parties”… parties who have got seats in parliament, and therefore government funding. You’d think with government funding they could come up with their own ideas. But since the idea is to get elected, they’ll take whatever they can get… whatever works is SOP.

Besides, if the green party has an idea one of the ruling parties adopts, they can make voters think that their party is environmentally friendly too. At the same time, the ruling party doesn’t have to actually DO anything about ideas they’ve poached. Quite often they just use them to get elected. If need be, they can always dust off that unfulfilled promise when an election is nearing and say they need to be re-elected so they can finish this good work.

Call me crazy, I think the government in a democracy should represent the citizens of the country, not the corporations.

One of the things I like best about the internet is the fact that it’s making the world small.

But it makes it so much easier to reconnect with the people we’ve lost touch with.
I’d love to hear from old friends, and new but if my nose is to the novelling grindstone, but you won’t hear from me ’til I come up for air.

Laurel L. Russwurm

Drop me a line at laurel.l@russwurm.org

the Oh! Canada blog by Laurel L. Russwurm is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. The only exceptions are images/artwork credited to others, which will indicate any different licensing.