Today is civic election day in my neck of the woods. I love voting. I've voted in every election and I change my vote a lot (Liberals for Joe!) One of my least favourite things is partisanship. You should be able to vote for who you want depending on the important issues of the day, not just because it's the way your parents voted or because of something that the governing party of the day did 20 years ago. This is why American politics drive me crazy and also why it's tough living in Alberta where the conservative have been in power since the dinosaurs were roaming through Drumheller. But civic politics are different - there are no party lines and the policies put in place my our mayor and aldermen (even if the are women, they are still called aldermen, but that's a different story), really matter. We spend so much time worrying about our federal politicians, but they are so removed from us - if my property taxes go up, if my streets are free of snow, if I have access to the library, if the bridge I walk across every day is patrolled by police, if there are enough seats in the arts venues, if the bike path is accessible to all, if construction delays my commute, etc - are all decided by the men and women who get voted in today. And I think that matters.
And just in case you needed another reminder about why voting is so important, in a great example of symmetry, it just so happens that 81 years ago today, 5 Canadian women won the right to be declared "persons" under the law in all Commonwealth countries. 81 years is not that long. It's not even a lifetime. My grandmother is 96. It's crazy to me that I know someone who at one point who would not have been allowed to have a say about the direction of the society in which she lives.
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