Serious Business: Elections

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Not everything is fun and games here at Explodicon. Sometimes things like real life and free pizza grab our attention and we're unable to blog for a while. 

Today I came across an article in the London Free Press. Now I'm not sure if Free refers to freedom of the press or just the quality of the paper. Nonetheless it had a very interesting article splattered over the front. 

 Blizzards of promises, duelling ideologies, tricky platforms -- it's tough enough for an informed voter to make sense of election choices, but what if you're like one in five who can't even read or write?

Your voter card that comes in the mail contains 13 sets of written instructions alone -- a huge challenge for the 20 per cent of adults in many cities, including London-Middlesex, who can't read the directions on a simple medicine label.

Elections Canada is reaching out to those with low literacy skills -- that's about half of all Canadians, including those with only basic reading and writing skills -- before the Oct. 14 federal election.


Now I can't be the only person who has a problem with this. First off the paper is clearly manipulating statistics for drama. The first sentence misleads you into believing one in five Canadians are unable to read or write. That's a staggering number. Then the second sentence concedes that it's one in five adults who can't read or write. There's a difference. Adults who can't read or write English or French are mostly new immigrants, and therefore aren't eligable to vote anyways.  

Now that's not the problem. The problem is that, apparently people who can't understand what "take two pills every four hours as required" are voting and are therefore exerting their influence over the rest of us. Why are people who can't understand simple instructions in a postion to determine our futures in the first place? Inevitably someone will say it's a short step from taking these peoples' vote to only letting the elite vote to Canada becoming the Fourth Reich. If you were thinking that, not only are you an idiot, but you don't know your history either. 

Now if I were a pro-active hombre I'd do something about this. But I'm not. If a moron is elected this fall and everyone complains, I'll just sit back and smile. 

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