Vote for what you believe in

EDITORIAL: WHAT OTHERS THINK Far too often we aren’t voting for something, we’re voting against someone

When was the last time any of us were excited to vote for a politician? For most people it’s probably been a while.

Canadian politics have become so boring, as have the people involved in them. Not to mention our version of democracy is becoming quite fringe.

In our last federal election and in the one coming up, the candidates have all been mediocre at best — that’s being generous.

Justin Trudeau, Stephen Harper, Tom Mulcair, Andrew Scheer, Jagmeet Singh, Elizabeth May and Maxime Bernier… yawn.

The most interesting thing about that entire group is the Trudeau’s dad was prime minister a while ago.

Where are the real candidates hiding? Is no one else bored of constantly voting career politicians in and out of office?

It would be so much more interesting to be voting for people who actually cared for the betterment of the country.

Federal and provincial politics have really just become a shadow of what democracy really is.

Ontario just elected a new leader, Doug Ford, winning only on the fact that he wasn’t a Liberal or NDP candidate.

The Conservatives could have appointed a trained monkey as leader and it would have won that province in a landslide — Kathleen Wynne had more than overstayed her welcome.

In Alberta, we’re gearing up for more of the same.

As we all know, the NDP are in charge here. Driving around Medicine Hat we can see a lot of distaste for the party — whether it’s a bumper sticker on a lifted diesel truck, or a slew of comments on a News’ Facebook post — people are very vocally “done” with the NDP. That’s fair enough. The problem is Jason Kenney is going to win just because he isn’t a New Democrat.

Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of things?

People shouldn’t be winning elections and being given a lot of power over how things run just because they aren’t someone else, should they?

The exact same thing just happened down south.

A lot of people weren’t voting for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, they were voting against the other person.

Isn’t this the opposite of how things should work?

Shouldn’t we be voting for things we believe in — for things, ideas and people we’re passionate about?

Of course there’s always going to be disagreement with politics — the right and the left will always exist, but it just seems like no one is ever happy with what’s going on in the political sphere. That’s pretty lame. An editorial from the Medicine Hat News