{"id":14958,"date":"2010-10-19T11:16:24","date_gmt":"2010-10-19T15:16:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=14958"},"modified":"2013-01-21T13:37:06","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T18:37:06","slug":"torontos-great-schlep-this-election-is-up-to-you-get-your-people-voting-and-vote-for-number-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2010\/10\/19\/torontos-great-schlep-this-election-is-up-to-you-get-your-people-voting-and-vote-for-number-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Toronto’s Great Schlep — this election is up to you, get your people voting and vote for number two."},"content":{"rendered":"

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The following is a reprint of my Eye Weekly Psychogeography<\/a> column. It’s based entirely on you not wanting Rob Ford to be mayor of Toronto. If you want him to be your mayor, that’s cool, but you won’t like this column. Voter turnout in Calgary last night was an amazing (sadly) 53%. Toronto is on track to be well below that — let’s try not to do that. Vote! Photo by Toban Black<\/a>.
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In 2008, comedian Sarah Silverman headed up a viral video initiative called \u201cThe Great Schlep<\/a>\u201d that encouraged her fellow Jews to call or go visit their Nana, Bubbie or Zadie in Florida and get them to vote for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. Florida, being a swing state, could decide the Presidency for the entire country, as it did in 2000 with Bush vs Gore and, as Silverman saw it, the Jewish grandparents held the key (and, based on the outcome, perhaps did). Toronto isn\u2019t a swing state and neither Pantalone nor Smitherman is an Obama, but we need to get out the vote now more than ever.<\/p>\n

This campaign has depressed much of the city and maybe you too. Except for the true believers in each camp, lots of Torontonians are only reluctantly supporting a candidate or wistfully wishing for a \u201cnone-of-the-above\u201d magic municipal reset button. With such an uninspiring electoral landscape, the risk for low voter turnout is great. Municipal elections already have the lowest, embarrassing-for-a-democracy turnout levels. In 2006, there were 1.42 million eligible voters in Toronto and only 584,000 ballots cast. That\u2019s a 41 per cent turnout. At the federal and provincial levels, turnout is generally over 50 per cent. Strangely, municipal politics is the level of government that affects our day-to-day lives the most, yet it has the lowest level of participation.<\/p>\n

What Toronto needs right now is its own Great Schlep, but instead of talking to just our grandparents, we need to talk to everybody we know within the city limits and make sure they actually vote. (If you\u2019ve read this far you probably are planning to vote. If not, then: hey, you, get out and vote on Oct. 25.) Do what you were taught not to do and bring up politics whenever and wherever: at a civilized dinner party; during polite conversation; in the steam room at your gym; even at work. Threaten to unfriend people on Facebook if they don\u2019t vote (you\u2019ve unfriended for far less, certainly). Forget whatever social transgressions you\u2019ll make by doing so, because the fate of Toronto is at stake. What could be more important? The city is your living room. You want it to be nice? It\u2019s up to you to do something.<\/p>\n

Also unlike the Florida Great Shlep, Toronto\u2019s wouldn\u2019t be based on geography. If you don\u2019t want Ford to win, his support goes in all directions and his voters live downtown, uptown; are suburban and urban. Once you\u2019ve got people voting, you can stop threatening them with shunning. Tell them what you like about Toronto (a radical thing to do in this election), how you want it to feel and look every day. What kind of things do you want near your house? What\u2019s the ideal experience of getting to work or school or church for you? Then ask people what they want their city to look like. Once we\u2019re beyond hyperventilated election rhetoric, even somebody from opposite your political view likely has a Toronto vision closer to yours than it is different.<\/p>\n

Once you\u2019re talking, ask them to look at what the candidates are saying and what they stand for. When you make the case for Toronto, and the reasons you love it, the choices should become clearer. Or at least narrower. But then, there is still a choice and the anyone-but-Ford vote can easily be split, letting him come up the centre.<\/p>\n

Voter reform, the kind advocated by local activist Dave Meslin and his \u201cBetter Ballots<\/a>\u201d initiative (now called RaBIT<\/a> — Ranked Ballot Initiative)\u2014 pushing for reforms that would make it hard for a candidate to win with under 40 per cent of the popular vote, as is currently possible \u2014 and likely) won\u2019t happen in the next two weeks, so it\u2019s time to be strategic.<\/p>\n

The true believers behind candidates, as well as ideologues and utopians, who would not benefit from strategic voting will tell you it\u2019s a bad idea. Sure, it\u2019s depressing and it breeds political cynicism like nothing else. It\u2019s awful, not being true to what both your heart and mind is telling you. But then there\u2019s reality: across the political spectrum, we\u2019re left with candidates who haven\u2019t excited us. The left-of-centre Miller regime put its succession faith in weak candidates who either committed spectacular political suicide or have failed to grab the wider public\u2019s attention, and the right-of-centre haven\u2019t been able to field a candidate who they could fully get behind (this is why John Tory\u2019s name was tossed into the ring over<\/a> and over<\/a>).<\/p>\n

So, who to endorse in this critical but meh-inspiring election? Vote for number two. That is, whoever is polling behind Ford on election day is who I\u2019ll vote for. Then I\u2019ll go say a little prayer, take a walk, and remind myself why we\u2019re called Toronto the Good. With the anti-Ford vote at risk of being split, this is the only way to coalesce the opposition votes. It\u2019s not pretty. A smart city like Toronto deserves better and it feels hard to do, but anything else leads to a split.<\/p>\n

The winner will know that lots of folks reluctantly came around to them and, as they say, held their nose and voted. In an ideal world, that candidate would recognize that Toronto\u2019s centre, left and right, came around and reluctantly placed their trust in them for four years. In that time, other, more appealing candidates will emerge, one hopes. Our new mayor will need to appeal to these swing voters and govern Toronto accordingly. Ideally. So vote, and get your people to vote or else Toronto will get the mayor it deserves \u2014 honestly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is a reprint of my Eye Weekly Psychogeography column. It’s based entirely on you not wanting Rob Ford to be mayor of Toronto. If you want him to be your mayor, that’s cool, but you won’t like this column. Voter turnout in Calgary last night was an amazing (sadly) 53%. Toronto is onContinue reading “Toronto’s Great Schlep — this election is up to you, get your people voting and vote for number two.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[10172,661,9026,688,31,4657,1101,444,3197,426,227,16284,19],"class_list":["post-14958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-barack-obama","tag-calgary","tag-comedian","tag-dave-meslin","tag-election","tag-facebook","tag-florida","tag-john-tory","tag-local-activist","tag-mayor","tag-rob-ford","tag-sarah-silverman","tag-toronto"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nToronto's Great Schlep - this election is up to you, get your people voting and vote for number two. - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2010\/10\/19\/torontos-great-schlep-this-election-is-up-to-you-get-your-people-voting-and-vote-for-number-two\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Toronto's Great Schlep - this election is up to you, get your people voting and vote for number two. - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The following is a reprint of my Eye Weekly Psychogeography column. 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