Election Update: Ah, crap

[Writer's note - Usually while writing these posts I sip some whiskey for inspiration but recently I acquired a miserable bastard of a bacterial infection in my foot so today is different. Half of this post was written under the influence of a powerful and legal-but-not-technically-prescribed-to-me-per-se painkiller medication so I really can't speak to any typos and/or general weirdness.]

Dear friends,

Well, it's been over two weeks now since MC Loud's All Night Dance Party kicked off its campaign, and suffice to say it has so far been an unmitigated disaster.

First it was revealed our candidate in Oshawa was actually just a fake name made up by some punk kid. Then our candidate in Fredericton had to withdraw when it became pretty clear he was dead, with our candidate in Fundy Royal serving a life sentence for his murder.

Our guy in Brampton turned out to be a seperatist, which we probably should have asked beforehand but, you know, it was Brampton, while our candidate in Vancouver Centre fell pray to illicit cooking substances and was busted as part of a cumin smuggling ring.

I myself became mired in controversy when that damned Steve Maher stole my tape recorder and published several embarrassingly candid conversations.

I said some unforgiveable things about left-handed people and for that I whole-heartedly apologize. And anyway, in some circles "sub-human" is used as a term of endearment.

Seeking traction, we trotted out a series of promises we thought would grab headlines - annexing Greenland, changing the title of 'Prime Minister' to 'Optimus Prime Minister', naked tuesdays. But research shows that most voters are still unaware that we exist.

It hasn't been all bad. We still have the coolest party name and polls show we're tied with the Bloc in nine of ten provinces. But still, it's clear we needed a wedge issue. Well now we've got one: Democracy.

Basically, we're against it. You maybe thinking, 'but that's not a wedge position at all. Every party is kind of anti-democracy.

And that's true. Every election begins witht the parties wildly alleging that this unfortunate turn of events is the other side's fault with such unsettling vigour that you kind of feel like our 308 MPs were all sealed in an elevator and tasked with figuring out who farted.

It's all but consensus that a multi-party government that represents a majority of voters is not only less democratic than a single-party government that represents a minority, it's a heresy akin to spitting on the queen.

And thanks to our first-past-the-post-fuck-second system, only voters in swing ridings really have the power to determine government (and then, only some swing ridings. A Bloc-NDP race is important and all but has no bearing on who will be PM [or at least it never did until this election turned a wonky shade of mustachioed orange.])

But despite all of this, the other parties still go on and on praising democracy, which, frankly, is a little irresponsible. Half the world is turning itself inside out fighting for the right to vote long after us Westerners have learned that democracy is just like any shiny new toy - flat-out bitchin at first but once you've had it for a while you get bored with it and eventually don't even want to bother.

We know that 40% or so of citizens agree with us, we just need to win them over. Admittedly, getting the anti-voting demographic to vote to reaffirm their anti-voting bias is one dilly of a pickle. But luckily we've got our Edmonton candidate Seymour Butts on the job of figuring it out.