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'voteswap.ca exists to make your vote count: To review, recommend and improve the diverse ways you can team up with another Canadian voter who is in a better position to advance your values than you are. Unfortunately, we have no recommendations for any recent provincial elections, as no credible services have emerged that seem to take poll and local factors into account adequately. We recommend using interactive services hosted on facebook in particular, as they provide an opportunity to learn more about persons you discuss politics with, and make voting agreements with. The vote swap Canada 2011 facebook app was the tool we generally recommend for this purpose. A Vote Swap Canada 2015 facebook app is in preparation. We may try to coordinate and integrate code base with votematch.org.uk [1] If you wish to volunteer to assist with it, contact [2].

To stir up hate, over-fund jails, under-fund treatment/monitoring of addicts and the mentally ill, as the false majority Harper government has done, has sad consequences.
Please share your memories of Raymond Taavel. Support electoral reform and other causes he supported.

Vote Swap Canada mourns the great loss of Raymond Taavel, murdered in a violent street attack in Halifax in April 2012. Raymond worked tirelessly for equality of all persons' rights including voting rights, and was a tireless electoral reform advocate who volunteered and worked with us in 2011 to prevent a false majority government led by bigots and bullies, and to make all votes including yours count. As a Buddhist, employee of a Buddhist newspaper and gay rights activist, Raymond promoted the values of calm and harmony, and will be much missed. Enjoy Nirvana, Raymond. You earned it.

Voters in provincial elections in 2012 and 2013 (in BC, NS, NL and possibly QC and ON which presently have minority governments) may be able to make some use of the technology as it is developed. Sadly it will not be available for the 2012 AB election. A major challenge is that most provinces other than ON use different electoral borders and do not necessarily align provincial with federal riding borders. Even the new 338-riding federal electoral map is not public domain and will require technical cracking or scraping to make available to all swappers. If you wish to volunteer to assist with this, or have any useful code or techniques, contact [3].

Contents

[edit] Current news

Canadian elections remain easy to manipulate and unrepresentative. Legal challenges to sitting MPs in at least 7 federal ridings have been launched after the robocon scandal. [4] The current federal government lacks legal legitimacy and despite this has done significant damage to environmental protections, First Nations and seniors' rights.


In early October 2011, four provincial and territorial elections took place. In PEI, NWT and ON these were first past the post type elections. But AB selected a PC party leader and thus its new Premier. Despite being effectively a one-party state, Alberta's election was arguably more democratic in that the multi-round runoff election technique used did not allow a "vote split" to radically reduce the representation of Alberta's progressive majority. Because the Alberta PCs make it relatively easy to join the party and vote for Premier, it's reasonable to consider this party's leadership race another provincial election. And perhaps the fairest of them.

[edit] Why not just vote "tactically"?

There are many "tactical" or "strategic" voting campaigns, e.g. catch22, swing33. However, surveys in the past have generally shown that only 1% of voters actually vote "strategically" and so the "swap"/"pairing" incentive does seem to be required to get many to act. Peer swapping/pairing is far superior to blind strategic voting insofar as:

In the 2008 election over 95% of all swappers were swapping to defeat a Harper Conservative. That will be even more true in 2011. If people informally swap with their friends, and especially if they convince people they know in swing ridings like Saanich-Gulf Islands (BC) to sign up, it is expected to swing more than one seat against Harper. A million voters presently ignored by the system can be included, also, if only several thousand Saanich voters did sign up willing to vote Green to get an effective Liberal or NDP vote in a swing riding (say 905 or around Vancouver). In a typical Canadian election the sum of all margins of victory is less than 15,000 votes. That is the difference between one party's majority and another! If you don't sign people up, a Harper majority is looming.

[edit] Who are we?

Voteswap.ca tries to provide neutral advice and is not sponsored by any party or faction other than those who believe that false majority government is wrong and FPTP ignores votes.

"Vote pairing (or vote swapping, as it has also been called) is the method where a voter in one district agrees to vote tactically for a less-preferred candidate or party who has a greater chance of winning in their district, in exchange for a voter from another district voting tactically for the candidate the first voter prefers, because that candidate has a greater possibility of winning in that district." Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_swapping [5]

Where the ballot does not offer a second choice, another citizen can. Where the first past the post electoral system ignores votes, another citizen can make their own, and yours, effective. Where a minority rules as if it were a majority, even small parties can rise to challenge them.

Vote swapping is not a "vote as I say" propaganda project where some central authority tries to convince you that you must vote a certain way. Vote swapping is an agreement between citizens (usually a pair of two individuals, but sometimes more, with agreements that may go beyond the vote itself) that ignores media, party and bureaucrats in order to 'make your vote count. If you aren't convinced vote swapping is better than strategic voting, see our general FAQ and if doubts remain after that see more detailed responses to critics. We also encourage you to edit this page and others.

[edit] What you can do

Two services accepted applications to swap in the 2011 election:

The most effective of these was the facebook application, because it was more responsive to the drastic changes of polls in the final weeks of the campaign. If you don't want to join a formal swap or pairing service, you can informally swap with anyone in a swing riding.

If two people in swing ridings, or one in a swing and one in a safe riding, can agree to vote for each other's preferred party informally, that's the easiest way to proceed. So please check first to see if you have such an opportunity among your personal network. The swapping services will likely be overloaded handling swaps between people who do not know each other. If you join the facebook application, invite all your friends to join it as this is the most flexible and immediate way to match up.

However, knowing which of these actually are or will swing is difficult. TOronto in particular had many surprising results. Pre-election guesses at Atlantic, Quebec and Ontario swings were quite unreliable, though Western estimates tended to be more accurate than in other regions.

If you wish to help convince others of the merit of vote swapping, please review and edit our FAQ for canvassing as well as the ordinary FAQ. Getting these right is essential, as a lot of people will be reading from these guides on talk radio, during phone canvass and door to door eventually. Perhaps few in the 2011 election, but many many more in the future.

[edit] Facebook

Active on facebook in 2011:

Dead, left over from 2008:


[edit] Other sources

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