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Blog Vote Compass 2019

Ways to Improve the CBC Vote Compass (Conclusion)

See my preamble for this exercise and analysis of each of the policy questions here: 2019 CBC Vote Compass Analysis.

First things first, let’s tally up the questions based on whether they simply ask for a policy position (good/OK), whether they could use more information for context (bad), or whether they’re based on an extremely racist proposal (awful).

Good Questions: [2, 5, 6, 25, 26]

OK Questions: [8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 21, 24, 27, 29, 30]

Bad Questions: [1, 3, 4, 7, 11, 12, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 28]

Awful Questions: [17, 23, 31&32]

By my count, that’s 5 good questions, 11 that are OK but could probably use more context, and another 12 that are just bad. Overall, in my opinion, that is just not a great ratio, never mind the 4 outright awful questions.

These bad (not awful) questions usually involve asking whether voters support ‘more’ of something without ever saying what the current state of the policy is. These kinds of questions allow me to give truly unhelpful answers, unless I happen to already know a ton about the topic.

There are also a bunch of bad questions, mostly having to do with racist or bigoted views, and it’s really unfortunate we’re at a point in politics where we need to ask if Canada of all places should admit more immigrants.

The good and OK questions from the survey all describe a policy relatively clearly, but the OK ones could definitely use some extra links on the page for information in case voters want to inform themselves before deciding what they think about a policy.

I find the Vote Compass quite accurate most of the time for me, but I’m not sure everybody else feels that way, and given the large number of people who actually use it (over a million in this election), adding some context to the questions would probably go a long way towards informing voters!

Anyways, thanks for reading, and get out on the 21st and vote!

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Blog Proposition Vote Compass 2019

Propositions 31 & 32 (QOTD): Religious Symbols Ban

I hate this new law so much. It’s so clear from the way it was put in place and the way it’s been defended that it’s just about racism against Middle Eastern people, mostly women specifically.

The two ‘Questions of the Day’ when I took the Vote Compass were all about this law, and though they are different questions, I can’t imagine most people answering them on different sides of the political spectrum (I guess it comes back to the question about the independence of Quebec).

I don’t know much about the way that the government of Canada could challenge the laws in Quebec, but given how racist the law is, I hope it is widely contested by whatever civil liberties bodies could be responsible for standing up for the rights of these civil servants.

Once again, the question itself is fine, with the exception that there could probably be some contextual information on the page about the specifics of the law available. It pains me to see that places in Canada would come up with something like this, but that’s where we are now.

Summary: Disagreeing with a law that most reasonable people would consider racist (was there a problem with religious people interfering with their civil duties, or is the problem with people using civil services complaining about feeling uncomfortable with non-Christian religious ‘symbols’ like burqas and complaining about it) shouldn’t be political. Do better and get back to me.

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Proposition 30: Religious Minorities

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Blog Proposition Vote Compass 2019

Proposition 30: Religious Minorities

This is a weird question for me, and because there’s no context, I’m also going to call it a bad question. How much are we saying is currently done to ‘accommodate’ religious minorities, because from my perspective it doesn’t seem like much outside of the bare minimum (for a secular state which for Christianity has all major holidays off and anybody who is not Christian arouses suspicion if in positions of influence).

I don’t want to say ‘much more’ should be done, because I know things are already done, but I don’t think we should be bending over backwards to make any possible accommodation for religions when what they want accommodated can potentially hurt others (eg. anti-vaccine people). If somebody can have their life improved through ‘accommodations’, I absolutely think they should be able to if it’s not hurting anyone, but I don’t think ‘because religion’ is a particularly good reason for making these accommodations. We should just do it.

Summary: The question is tough because it lacks context, but what context would you even give? It doesn’t mention what laws or legislation it’s referring to, so we’re just left to guess based on what we know about ‘religious minorities’. They shouldn’t be treated any differently than anybody else, religious or not.

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Proposition 29: Carbon Tax

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Propositions 31 & 32 (QOTD): Religious Symbols Ban

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