Congratulations to Vaughn Granter, the winner of a byelection to fill former premier Danny Williams’ seat in the House of Assembly. Granter won after an election-eve visit to the district by Williams himself, and despite choosing not to attend the only election debate in the district.
Granter beat his nearest competition by a margin of almost two to one, guaranteeing himself a seat in the House of Assembly for the 20 days or so the House is likely to sit before the next general election in October 2011.
But there are clear losers in the byelection, and we don’t mean the other candidates.
Frankly, the losers are us.
Why?
Look at the numbers.
Granter almost doubled the number of votes captured by his Liberal competitor, Mark Watton. But by winning with just 2,109 votes in a district with 8,893 eligible voters, Granter has the committed support of a whopping 23.7 per cent of the district’s voters.
Only 37 per cent of the possible voters even got out to cast ballots — meaning some 63 per cent of Humber West voters don’t even care who represents them in the House of Assembly.
And just in case you think it’s an isolated occurrence, or because there happened to be a storm in Corner Brook on Monday, look at the trend.
Topsail Tory MHA Paul Dean was elected in 2010 by garnering the support of less than 27 per cent of his district’s eligible voters.
In 2009, Terra Nova’s Sandy Collins managed just under 29 per cent.
In the Straits-White Bay North, Liberal Marshall Dean garnered votes from 28 per cent of the voters.
Two byelections on Aug. 27, 2008 saw Tory Kevin Pollard win in Baie Verte-Springdale with votes from 24 per cent of the eligible voters, and Tory Kevin Parsons win in Cape St. Francis with the support of almost 30 per cent of the eligible voters.
These are high-ranking jobs, supposedly reserved for top political representatives. The paycheque involved is one that many people in this province will never even get close to, and these are the people we charge with spending billions of dollars on our behalf, and with devising, writing and putting into place the legislation that governs everything from where and how you can drive your car to what kind of safety net we have for the province’s poor. They control fish processing and plant licences, make-work projects and highway maintenance, road plowing and oilfield deals and the structure of health care.
Despite that, the majority of people can’t find the time to get a basic understanding of the issues, trundle down to the polling station and put an X in a box on a ballot. (Don’t want to be too over the top here, but just last week, Egyptians were fighting and even dying for just that opportunity.)
If you couldn’t even get off your backside to vote, you have no right to complain about how lousy, venial or downright pathetic your representation turns out to be. Heck, if they steal from you (as some of our politicians recently did), you hardly have a right to complain; you took no part in picking them, so they hardly betrayed your trust.
At least the candidates bothered to show up at the polls.
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Hi, Agnes!