The quality of televised reporting seems to have reached a new low in journalistic professionalism. Global BC in particular seemed to be disorganized and sometimes their anchors seemed just bewildered. Based on some of the comments, I’m guessing that they had a series of data-systems failures and much of the confusion resulted from inconsistent information appearing simultaneously (but this is purely conjecture on my part).  However, there was a marked disability of the reporters and anchors to recover from issues and keep the flow of the presentation itself flowing.  Perhaps that’s a good thing in that it does point to the fallibility and constructed nature of the news as presented; in the era of the Old CBC style, and the buttoned-down and heavily scripted presentation, I suppose the average viewer may have been less aware of the media’s involvement in the production and interpretation of the message.

I don’t want to overly criticize the performance of the Global BC team: they are likely dealing with a huge influx of incoming messages and data that is a scaled up version of the information that I was monitoring on Twitter ( #canadavotes ), television (Global, CBC and CTV…), Facebook groups, email and IM from friends and colleagues, etc.  Perhaps the limits of television news’ linear presentation has met it’s match in the Web 2.0 period (sorry, had to use the term) and the stress that the medium faced in trying to filter and funnel so many live sources was what was actually evident in the presentation.   

Another thing that struck me in this election coverage was the insistence of the news media to present the counting of the ballots to be an active race between candidates.  There was rampant use of variations of the phrase “Candidate X in riding Y really has their work cut out for them tonight if they are to defeat the incumbent, Z.”  By the point that the results are being tallied, the work of the candidates and their campaign teams are done of course, the only remaining task being to count the votes. I’m wondering if this form of presentation, though obviously useful from the perspective of the news outlets, actually works to reduce participation in future elections. The actual act of voting seems quite separate from the race that appears to happen during the count; in my mind, even though I know that the presentation of the race is merely a method to make a rather dull process of counting ‘news worthy,’ I couldn’t help but feel that my action much earlier in the day was unrelated to the battle currently underway. In some way, the old vote counting processes and reporting made my action feel more significant and more connected to the process at large. I wonder if I’m alone in that thought?  If I’m not alone, will the effect of this sense of disconnectedness encourage people to increasingly become spectators rather than participants?

Further, I found a similar sense of disconnect when the outcomes of the election were largely called before we even had any results back from any BC polls. Although BC’s voters did make a difference for the balance of party power with Liberals and NDP having a fairly significant impact in many ridings, by the time the overall election results were ‘announced’, it really does leave the feeling that the BC vote doesn’t matter. If we made no other change to how votes were actually counted, I’d like Elections Canada to hold off on announcing election results until a significant number of polls from across the country had been counted.  I don’t think such a change would actually make any difference in the outcome of an individual election, but I think it might help in increasing the sense of engagement in the process for voters to the west of Ontario, and hopefully increase participation overall. 

All that said, there are so many other problems in the current electoral process that I really feel we need some significant restructuring.  I value my right to vote and I exercise that right. We have a country which supports several unique situations including a popular separatist party holding seats in the Federal government yet with relatively little violent activity or bloodshed, at least in recent years.  However, my one real opportunity to influence the process is to state my preference for a candidate to act as my representative in government. Once my vote is made, I have little voice for the next several years until the next election.  

We are indeed fortunate to live in a country where, for the most part, political activism and action is at least tolerated to a level which much of the world considers to be rather high: I won’t be shot for voting for the Marxist-Leninist candidate if I choose to do so; however, in reality once the election is over my voice essentially has no direct process for influencing choices made by government. Significant political activism often places one in the margins of society from the perspective of the media (see, for example, coverage of the WTO riots in Vancouver). On relatively pedestrian issues, I can write to the newspapers and my local MP, but rarely is there either a guarantee of an audience nor a general feeling that such communication will really make it past the various gatekeepers.  To be fair, some MPs are quite active and do attempt to communicate with their constituents, but they are the exceptions for the large part, providing these opportunities on their own accord, there is no mechanism that guarantees that the voices of all Canadians will be heard.

Realistically, it’s difficult to get a group of people more than one person to agree on solutions to relatively trivial issues, so obviously it would not be possible for every Canadian to participate in a process that would produce a reasonable negotiated agreement on every national issue.  We do know, however, that even at the level of the elections of entire parties the full spectrum of Canadian viewpoints is not represented.  In this election, I understand that the Green Party received 7% of the popular vote, but no seats.  The Bloc Québecois, on the other hand, currently shows 50 seats gained with only 10% of the popular vote.  Can this be representative of the will of the Canadian people?

With so many issues leading to a sense of disconnection between the voter and the results of the contest(s), I’m afraid that the spectator to participant ratio of Canadian voters will only increase in the future.  Significant election reform and a re-analysis of how the results are conveyed are needed soon to prevent upcoming generations from giving up on the process altogether.  

I fear the day when, like so many Strata AGMs, Canada would have to stop an election because we couldn’t meet quorum  ;-)