So that didn’t take long. It will be three weeks tomorrow since Nova Scotians voted in a provincial general election. You may remember that election: the one in which Stephen McNeil’s Liberals came within a few hundred votes here or there of losing their majority status, the one in which more than six out of...
People are fallible, and that’s why internet voting is a horrible idea: Morning File, Tuesday, June 6, 2017
News 1. Recounts Denise Peterson-Rafuse, the NDP candidate in the Chester–St. Margaret’s riding, has filed for a recount, I reported yesterday: Peterson-Rafuse, the incumbent, lost to Liberal challenger Hugh MacKay by just 90 votes, 3,112 to 3,022 total votes. PC candidate Julie Chiasson received 2,229 votes, and Green candidate Harry Ward received 413 votes. Thirty-four ballots were […]
Denise Peterson-Rafuse files for recount
Denise Peterson-Rafuse, the NDP candidate in the Chester–St. Margaret’s riding, has filed for a recount. Peterson-Rafuse, the incumbent, lost to Liberal challenger Hugh MacKay by just 90 votes, 3112 to 3022 total votes. PC candidate Julie Chiasson received 2,229 votes, and Green candidate Harry Ward received 413 votes. Thirty-four ballots were rejected. Chester–St. Margaret’s was one of […]
Four more years… What might have been
Just as Stephen McNeil walked on to the stage to acknowledge his new minority government reality, CBC news announcer Sandy Smith cut in. There’d been yet another change in the party standings, he said, and Stephen McNeil’s Liberals were now in “majority territory.”
For me, the sweetest, saddest moment of last Tuesday’s election night lasted not much more than a moment. And it didn’t happen until the tail end of the first hour of Wednesday morning. Sometime after midnight, I gave up on the TV broadcast. At that point, the CBC decision desk still couldn’t say for certain...
Since none of the above is not on the ballot…
During last week’s CTV leaders’ roundtable, Jamie Baillie issued a direct appeal to voters: “For those people who are undecided or leaning to the NDP, I am asking them to take a look at us because we share the same goal.” The same goal, yes… The same values?
Who would you like to see win tomorrow’s provincial general election? Who should win tomorrow’s provincial general election? If you answered none of the above to either — or both — of the above, welcome to the club. And perhaps welcome too to that more select group — the none-of-the-above-but-definitely-not-Stephen-McNeil club — which Progressive Conservative...
Are election campaigns places to discuss serious issues?
In theory, this election could have been an ideal opportunity to debate the kind of society we want for the future. That’s because, for perhaps the first time in 20 years, one political party appears to be offering an alternative to more of the same.
Election campaigns are no place to discuss serious issues. That’s what Kim Campbell — Canada’s now-you-see-her-now-you-don’t, first-and-only-female prime minister — infamously declared in 1993 in the middle of her one and only federal election campaign as a party leader. Though I was among those who mocked her at the time, I now believe she was […]
Havana, Halifax and the state of democracy
This ultimately may be the real problem with our democracy: It is impossible for the average voter to believe anything any politician promises.
I confess. I spent a quiet weekend that my Nova Scotia journalist colleagues no doubt filled to the almost end with feverish when-will-he/will-he pull the plug media speculation about the date of our next provincial election. That’s because I spent my weekend in the relatively un-suspense-filled and almost completely Nova Scotia-free world of Havana, Cuba....
The way politics works — and doesn’t — in Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is the only province in the country without legislation to set provincial election dates. The province’s chief electoral officer suggested such legislation in a 2015 report. Stephen McNeil even supported the idea before his Saul-like reversion to the status quo on the road to his own re-election. That’s the way these things work in Nova Scotia.
I got a call the other evening from an earnest young telemarketer person, urging me to pony up cash so the New Democratic Party could wage glorious, seat-re-gaining war in the coming provincial election, which he suggested — with even greater earnestness and urgency — the party is expecting to be called “any day now,...