Do your homework

Well, things electoral are firming up.

It may already feel to many like the federal election has been going on forever, but the fact is that the halfway point isn’t even until next Tuesday — we’re on Day 17 of the long march of 41 days today, long enough for the weaker among us to almost beg for a respite.

Election promises are being trotted out, the social media slagging that absolutely everybody expected is bouncing back and forth, and the touring leaders are doing their level best to try and get their talking points on air.

Policies are also gradually coming out, from commitments to pharmacare to talking about reducing cellphone bills to reducing taxes.

All of this against the backdrop of Justin Trudeau’s past proclivity for wearing blackface and brownface makeup in years past.

It’s already been a remarkable election, and you may well have already made up your mind on where your vote is going, or maybe where your vote isn’t going. If you haven’t, perhaps we can make a suggestion? If you’re undecided at this point, perhaps make the effort to separate the wheat from the chaff by listening more to what politicians say their party’s intentions are, and less to what they have to say about their opponents.

Don’t go to the ballot box with nothing more than a loose sense of how you think you should vote, or with the convenient, no-effort ease of “I always vote for the …”.

Go in with conviction and research about the issues that matter to you, and with an idea of which politician and party aligns best with your ideals for this country, whoever that might be.

And why tell you this now?

Because there’s still time to do your democratic homework.

There’s still time to make a difference — especially as the heat gets turned up even more in the closing weeks of the campaign.

By all accounts (and the current run of polls, barring sudden changes) this will be a close election. Close elections are where your votes matter most, and the politicians know it.

Politicians of all stripes, and their supporters, feel the added urgency of getting every last sympathetic voter they can find to the polls.

And that kind of desperation has already meant parties are moving from the pre-election scripts into bigger and bigger promises.

We’d like to believe that cooler heads will prevail, but in all likelihood, that’s a faint hope.

All the more reason for voters to keep their feet on their ground, their heads in the game, and their attention firmly on what they think this country needs.

You only get the opportunity to do this job once every four years or so — please, for all of our sakes, do it thoughtfully.