4 ms·

As an albertan this feels like desperate pandering to a tiny vocal minority to distract from real issues. Almost nobody wants this.

by bawolff 5mo ago

brightball 5mo ago
A vote should end up showing that to be the case at least.
- jpalawaga 5mo ago
  maybe in the same way that we have to keep voting on awful privacy legislation
- matthewdgreen 5mo ago
  That's what they said about Brexit. 52% of the population voted yes in a single election, and the rest got dragged along for a multi-year ride. Current polls put support for the decision at 31%, but it's too late.
  - iso1631 5mo ago
    About a quarter voted yes, about a quarter voted no, about a quarter didn't vote and a quarter couldn't vote
    - bonesss 5mo ago
      Rationally, and unlike what that dirty old lady in The Holy Grail suggests, binding votes impacting foreign relations should happen on a single 50.01% vote and never ratified or verified. More rationally, if some 25% of the country can’t express themselves and another 25% are unsure/uncommitted one should assume their interests are best represented by the most invigorated and unified minority. I wish I could drop an ‘/s’, but, uh, ‘/no-really-thats-this-timeline’.
  - Aachen 5mo ago
    > 52% of the population voted yes Huh? 37% of the eligible voters, much less the population, voted yes according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_U...
    - BadBadJellyBean 5mo ago
      Everyone who didn't vote and had the ability, voted yes as well. If you don't vote you go along what the majority wants. So for me 52% is correct. You have to vote for what you want or at least against what you don't want. Otherwise you are an enabler.
      - Aachen 5mo ago
        That makes no sense to me. They didn't know the outcome beforehand; had odds fallen the other way, your argument would have stated that they voted no. Were they in a superposition before the results came in, voting both yes and no simultaneously?! We can't know what they want if they don't or can't vote. Putting "they voted yes" in their mouth sounds insulting to me, but I'm an outsider to the UK so maybe it's wrong for me to say that
        u_fucking_dork 5mo ago
        > They didn't know the outcome beforehand; had odds fallen the other way, your argument would have stated that they voted no. Were they in a superposition before the results came in, voting both yes and no simultaneously?! Yes, of course, they didn’t give a shit. They couldn’t be bothered. Outcome was whatever for them.
        Aachen 5mo ago
        Or they couldn't vote (besides work and caretaking, Wikipedia mentions that a few thousand's ballots were invalid before the vote even started due to an accounting error), or they thought "don't give our neighbors the finger" was a foregone conclusion. I should also hope that such a vote in my country, where it's economic suicide much more than in the UK, goes to an easy "no", but since Brexit I've learned that I need to always encourage everyone to make time and vote anyway no matter how dumb it seems. They didn't have that example and I'm not so sure if a confirming vote would habe turned out the same way for example You can say a lot of things about the majority of this group but not that it was necessarily irrelevant to the whole group
  - burnt-resistor 5mo ago
    Because of a well-funded manufacturing consent PR campaign that activated ethnonationalist sentiment.
- Broken_Hippo 5mo ago
  Unless you make sure that most, if not all adults can vote, it won't show it. If you only have 45% of your population votes, regardless of reason, you aren't actually getting the public opinion.
  - babypuncher 5mo ago
    If people choose not to vote, then clearly their opinion on the issue wasn't very strong to begin with.
    - Broken_Hippo 5mo ago
      That still means you do not get actual public opinion. Public opinion doesn't consist of only strong opinions. You seem to think that voting is a simple choice of "do it or don't" and it really isn't that simple. You need little restrictions. For example, not every country takes away voting rights from prisoners or folks previously convicted as a felon. Some places are pretty lenient to pregnant folks, sick people, etc. When my mother was pregnant with my sister, due around voting day, they nearly didn't let her vote absentee. She argued and got to vote but how many people were just denied in this situation? It would be a non-issue in some places. It wasn't that she didn't have an opinion - she was just nearing the time for freaking birth. When I moved to Norway from the US, I no longer had to deal with voter registration. Once I lived here 3 years, I could vote in local elections. They just send me a voting card. Voting is easy, can be done in multiple locations over a period of a few weeks. So long as I had the card, no ID needed. (most folks keep their address updated for multiple reasons, so getting it isn't a big issue for me, anyway). Any barriers you have to voting - like the registration system in the US, inflexible voting times, or very strict voter id laws - means that some folks won't be able to vote even if they want to. Barriers that make it difficult for groups of folks to vote is just a way for the state to control the election instead of the people voting with their conscience. 21 countries have compulsory voting laws, on the other hand. And you can't say that a voter's opinion is a strong one, just that they vote. So many folks vote by just voting with the party they chose. That's not a strong opinion. That's just voting, and no one is checking motivations to see.
nickff 5mo ago
As a non-Albertan, this seems like a great bargaining ploy to get some leverage against the Federal Government, just like Quebec did. Most political parties in Canada seem to ignore and exploit the West most of the time, whereas they treat Quebec (transfer payments) and the maritimes (oil revenues and employment insurance) much more thoughtfully.
- boringg 5mo ago
  Exploit the West? Thats rich and definitely a western centric short sighted viewpoint.
  - nickff 5mo ago
    The Salmon Arm Salute is still remembered in the West: https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/a-b-c-museum-says-its-preserved-the-railcar-from-which-pierre-trudeau-gave-the-finger-to-protesters https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/a-b-c-museum-says-its...
  - lm411 5mo ago
    Many in the west certainly wouldn't agree with you now, or 100+ years ago. https://xcancel.com/DonBraid/status/1187052993788559360 https://xcancel.com/DonBraid/status/1187052993788559360 This is about more than just money though. Politically the west is underrepresented and the cultural difference between the West and the rest of Canada is very significant - unless you ask folks from Ontario who have never been to AB. In my opinion, Canada is too geographically and culturally diverse for a central government to have so much power.
    - Supermancho 5mo ago
      > Canada is too geographically and culturally diverse for a central government to have so much power. The United States has also had this problem for a long time, imo.
- Teever 5mo ago
  Unfortunately it isn't a bargaining ploy.[0] These people are serious. They feel a genuine sense of grievance for how they perceive the rest of Canada has treated them. They have come to believe that there is a legitimate Albertan identity that is unique to the region and people and that is being persecuted 'by Ottawa.' They also feel that the separatist course of action is one with nothing but positives and only minor negatives. Some of them lie about ulterior motives to see Alberta join the US, while others are in denial that this could even be a possible outcome should Albertans decide to separate. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43487443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43487443
tavavex 5mo ago
They know that getting a legitimate majority vote is pretty much impossible. This probably isn't their intention. They want to get any vote on the ballot, then cry about the results being falsified and beg the US to invade. They want to be treated like Crimea.

As an albertan this feels like desperate pandering to a tiny vocal minority to distract from real issues. Almost nobody wants this.

by bawolff 5mo ago

As an albertan this feels like desperate pandering to a tiny vocal minority to distract from real issues. Almost nobody wants this.

brightball 5mo ago

A vote should end up showing that to be the case at least.

jpalawaga 5mo ago
maybe in the same way that we have to keep voting on awful privacy legislation
matthewdgreen 5mo ago
That's what they said about Brexit. 52% of the population voted yes in a single election, and the rest got dragged along for a multi-year ride. Current polls put support for the decision at 31%, but it's too late.
- iso1631 5mo ago
  About a quarter voted yes, about a quarter voted no, about a quarter didn't vote and a quarter couldn't vote
  - bonesss 5mo ago
    Rationally, and unlike what that dirty old lady in The Holy Grail suggests, binding votes impacting foreign relations should happen on a single 50.01% vote and never ratified or verified. More rationally, if some 25% of the country can’t express themselves and another 25% are unsure/uncommitted one should assume their interests are best represented by the most invigorated and unified minority. I wish I could drop an ‘/s’, but, uh, ‘/no-really-thats-this-timeline’.
- Aachen 5mo ago
  > 52% of the population voted yes Huh? 37% of the eligible voters, much less the population, voted yes according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_U...
  - BadBadJellyBean 5mo ago
    Everyone who didn't vote and had the ability, voted yes as well. If you don't vote you go along what the majority wants. So for me 52% is correct. You have to vote for what you want or at least against what you don't want. Otherwise you are an enabler.
    - Aachen 5mo ago
      That makes no sense to me. They didn't know the outcome beforehand; had odds fallen the other way, your argument would have stated that they voted no. Were they in a superposition before the results came in, voting both yes and no simultaneously?! We can't know what they want if they don't or can't vote. Putting "they voted yes" in their mouth sounds insulting to me, but I'm an outsider to the UK so maybe it's wrong for me to say that
      - u_fucking_dork 5mo ago
        > They didn't know the outcome beforehand; had odds fallen the other way, your argument would have stated that they voted no. Were they in a superposition before the results came in, voting both yes and no simultaneously?! Yes, of course, they didn’t give a shit. They couldn’t be bothered. Outcome was whatever for them.
        Aachen 5mo ago
        Or they couldn't vote (besides work and caretaking, Wikipedia mentions that a few thousand's ballots were invalid before the vote even started due to an accounting error), or they thought "don't give our neighbors the finger" was a foregone conclusion. I should also hope that such a vote in my country, where it's economic suicide much more than in the UK, goes to an easy "no", but since Brexit I've learned that I need to always encourage everyone to make time and vote anyway no matter how dumb it seems. They didn't have that example and I'm not so sure if a confirming vote would habe turned out the same way for example You can say a lot of things about the majority of this group but not that it was necessarily irrelevant to the whole group
- burnt-resistor 5mo ago
  Because of a well-funded manufacturing consent PR campaign that activated ethnonationalist sentiment.
Broken_Hippo 5mo ago
Unless you make sure that most, if not all adults can vote, it won't show it. If you only have 45% of your population votes, regardless of reason, you aren't actually getting the public opinion.
- babypuncher 5mo ago
  If people choose not to vote, then clearly their opinion on the issue wasn't very strong to begin with.
  - Broken_Hippo 5mo ago
    That still means you do not get actual public opinion. Public opinion doesn't consist of only strong opinions. You seem to think that voting is a simple choice of "do it or don't" and it really isn't that simple. You need little restrictions. For example, not every country takes away voting rights from prisoners or folks previously convicted as a felon. Some places are pretty lenient to pregnant folks, sick people, etc. When my mother was pregnant with my sister, due around voting day, they nearly didn't let her vote absentee. She argued and got to vote but how many people were just denied in this situation? It would be a non-issue in some places. It wasn't that she didn't have an opinion - she was just nearing the time for freaking birth. When I moved to Norway from the US, I no longer had to deal with voter registration. Once I lived here 3 years, I could vote in local elections. They just send me a voting card. Voting is easy, can be done in multiple locations over a period of a few weeks. So long as I had the card, no ID needed. (most folks keep their address updated for multiple reasons, so getting it isn't a big issue for me, anyway). Any barriers you have to voting - like the registration system in the US, inflexible voting times, or very strict voter id laws - means that some folks won't be able to vote even if they want to. Barriers that make it difficult for groups of folks to vote is just a way for the state to control the election instead of the people voting with their conscience. 21 countries have compulsory voting laws, on the other hand. And you can't say that a voter's opinion is a strong one, just that they vote. So many folks vote by just voting with the party they chose. That's not a strong opinion. That's just voting, and no one is checking motivations to see.

nickff 5mo ago

As a non-Albertan, this seems like a great bargaining ploy to get some leverage against the Federal Government, just like Quebec did. Most political parties in Canada seem to ignore and exploit the West most of the time, whereas they treat Quebec (transfer payments) and the maritimes (oil revenues and employment insurance) much more thoughtfully.

boringg 5mo ago
Exploit the West? Thats rich and definitely a western centric short sighted viewpoint.
- nickff 5mo ago
  The Salmon Arm Salute is still remembered in the West: https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/a-b-c-museum-says-its-preserved-the-railcar-from-which-pierre-trudeau-gave-the-finger-to-protesters https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/a-b-c-museum-says-its...
- lm411 5mo ago
  Many in the west certainly wouldn't agree with you now, or 100+ years ago. https://xcancel.com/DonBraid/status/1187052993788559360 https://xcancel.com/DonBraid/status/1187052993788559360 This is about more than just money though. Politically the west is underrepresented and the cultural difference between the West and the rest of Canada is very significant - unless you ask folks from Ontario who have never been to AB. In my opinion, Canada is too geographically and culturally diverse for a central government to have so much power.
  - Supermancho 5mo ago
    > Canada is too geographically and culturally diverse for a central government to have so much power. The United States has also had this problem for a long time, imo.
Teever 5mo ago
Unfortunately it isn't a bargaining ploy.[0] These people are serious. They feel a genuine sense of grievance for how they perceive the rest of Canada has treated them. They have come to believe that there is a legitimate Albertan identity that is unique to the region and people and that is being persecuted 'by Ottawa.' They also feel that the separatist course of action is one with nothing but positives and only minor negatives. Some of them lie about ulterior motives to see Alberta join the US, while others are in denial that this could even be a possible outcome should Albertans decide to separate. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43487443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43487443

tavavex 5mo ago

They know that getting a legitimate majority vote is pretty much impossible. This probably isn't their intention. They want to get any vote on the ballot, then cry about the results being falsified and beg the US to invade. They want to be treated like Crimea.