Thoughts from someone in Elizabeth May’s riding on Vancouver Island, who worked for the Green Party of Canada, about strategic voting, voting for 3rd parties and for the Green Party in particular.
OK Rayne, now that the election is over and I am not longer working for Elections Canada I can express my opinion
1) I am not sure why you treated the clusterfuck that has been the Green Party of Canada for more than a decade with such kid gloves. Someone has to say out loud, Elizabeth May has been a very bad leader of the party and her actions have held back the party.
2) The 2025 election result is way beyond a disaster. 1.25% - there are no words for this bad a result. Fringe parties that will never elect anyone have done better than that at times, but this was a party with two sitting MPs. The result is even worse, 1/4 of the Green vote went to three candidates, May, Morice, and Manly. Manly finished fourth.
3) The Green stronghold of Vancouver Island was not. The other five Geens on the island combined could not even reach 8,500 votes - only about 2% of the vote in the other five seats. Not so many years ago the Greens was the #3 party on the Island federally and not far behind the Conservatives. Victoria and ESS were legitimate potential wiins by anyone's measure. The Greater Victoria area is where the party has all its most experienced campaigners and hundreds ( maybe as many as 1500) volunteers in past elections. I know ESS had close to 400 in 2015 when I worked on that campaign.
I could on and on and on but I need to have my lunch and not think about this.
A good piece that needed to be written. I really laughed hard at "bogarted the moral authority"
OK Rayne, now that the election is over and I am not longer working for Elections Canada I can express my opinion
1) I am not sure why you treated the clusterfuck that has been the Green Party of Canada for more than a decade with such kid gloves. Someone has to say out loud, Elizabeth May has been a very bad leader of the party and her actions have held back the party.
2) The 2025 election result is way beyond a disaster. 1.25% - there are no words for this bad a result. Fringe parties that will never elect anyone have done better than that at times, but this was a party with two sitting MPs. The result is even worse, 1/4 of the Green vote went to three candidates, May, Morice, and Manly. Manly finished fourth.
3) The Green stronghold of Vancouver Island was not. The other five Geens on the island combined could not even reach 8,500 votes - only about 2% of the vote in the other five seats. Not so many years ago the Greens was the #3 party on the Island federally and not far behind the Conservatives. Victoria and ESS were legitimate potential wiins by anyone's measure. The Greater Victoria area is where the party has all its most experienced campaigners and hundreds ( maybe as many as 1500) volunteers in past elections. I know ESS had close to 400 in 2015 when I worked on that campaign.
I could on and on and on but I need to have my lunch and not think about this.