The announcement yesterday of former Alberta Liberal moving from Independent and becoming the first MLA of the revived and revised Alberta Party drew lots of interesting reaction in MSM and social media. Some on Twitter called up a blog post I did over a year ago when two Conservatives bolted directly to the Alliance last January.
Fair game but I felt there was a slight misrepresentation of what I was suggesting and seeking input from readers on floor crossing at that time...but that is for others to judge. Here is a link to the January 2, 2010 post for you to consider. Here is the central question I was asking about voter motivation in election:
When citizens cast ballots it is unclear if they are voting for a party, a candidate, a leader, a platform, an issue of just name recognition or any combination of these motivations. Do we elect politicians to exercise their best judgement or to reflect the majority opinion of their constiuents or perhaps some other controversial but perhaps more "enlightened" position on an issue?
So I pose the same questions again but this time as "A burning question!" You can let your thoughts be known in the comments to this blog and on the Burning Question on the right hand side too.
People vote for any number of reasons. Some of them vote to feel like a part of the winning team. Others vote to cheer for their team, even if they know they'll never win. Some vote to be seen doing their civic duty. These are besides all the reasons you gave.
ReplyDeleteOn the flip side, in representative government, the elected candidate represents the views and needs of all constituents, not only those who voted for them. So I feel that consultation is much more important than ideology when it comes to issues like floor-crossing.