Election signs were sign of things to come

Election signs were sign of things to come

Columns

By: Bernie O'Neill

You knew something was up, based on the lawn signs.

I have covered plenty of elections in the past and you don’t want to put too much stock in these things — the colourful signage that adorns lawns and, sometimes, non-lawns in every election campaign.

You wonder if the candidate just has a lot of relatives.

Or else people are just exhibitionists when it comes to their political leanings.

You happen to be in a pocket of exhibitionist Conservatives.

It’s kind of like wondering onto a nude beach. I mean, you just didn’t realize they were going to let their political peccadilloes hang out there for all to see.

Soon you’re driving around, trying to see if there are Liberal or NDP exhibitionists, or maybe Green ones, that just happen to live in other parts of Oak Ridges—Markham. (No offence but for some reason they sound like they might be more fun.)

But you couldn’t seem to find any such pockets.

As an observer, you start to count the signs as you drive down the road.

You’re gauging whether or not the sign is on an actual front lawn, or just over near the curb, planted there on public property by a party supporter.

A lawn sign on an actual lawn means a lot. It means votes, maybe a whole household full.

A sign on a curb, well, it means they have more signs than they are able to give away.

There seemed to be a lot of big blue signs on real front lawns.

I have always believed in the time-honoured tradition of the secret ballot. So even if I wasn’t in the newspaper business, I would likely keep my party of preference to myself.

I’d always be afraid some election would come down to a cliffhanger in one riding, and after the recount, my guy wins.

And then everything that went wrong from then on in, well, my neighbours, who don’t share my views, could point at my place.

“See that guy over there? He had a (insert colour here) election sign on his lawn. He voted just before the polls closed at 9:29 p.m. It was his vote that put them over the top.”

Then, when the economy goes south, they’re leaving dead chickens on my lawn or calling the police for no reason and saying I was disturbing the peace. That’s the kind of stuff you think about, after having seen one too many elections.

We were trying to get the election results to our website Tuesday night, and it was tricky.

It was such a close race in the one riding that neither of the frontrunners surfaced until most of you had gone to bed.

I must say I always admire the graciousness of the person who finished second. In Markham—Unionville, Duncan Fletcher congratulated his opponent, John McCallum and a well-run campaign.

In Oak Ridges—Markham, Liberal Lui Temelkovski made the trek up Hwy. 48 to Stouffville at 1 a.m. to congratulate Paul Calandra, the Conservative who beat him by about 400 votes.

That is less than a percentage point of the total votes cast, but it is still enough to make it count and at this writing it does not appear there is any talk of a recount.

Recounts are only automatic if the spread is 0.1 per cent or less, in other words just a handful of votes, not a few hundred.

What will the results mean for the people in Markham, or Canada in general?

It’s probably too soon to say.

While I would never reveal how I voted, I will say I don’t have much of a problem with a minority government.

The situation forces the party in power to moderate its positions and I think that’s what the majority of Canadians are after — nothing too radical.

That’s why the past two years, I would argue, have brought relatively good government. The Conservatives have pushed some items through and backed off on others and that’s how it should be. To be able to pass legislation that is truly unpopular with the majority of people, just because you have the majority of seats, is a weakness of our system, at least some of the time.

In the meantime, some of these candidates may be renting some warehouse space or devoting part of a garage to storing their signs for the next time around.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come too soon.

All content contained in this or any other yorkregion.com website including but not limited to textual, audio, video and any graphics are copyright 2000-2008 Metroland Media Group Ltd. and can not be used in any part without expressed written permission, with the exception of content in the yorkregion.com Pen & Pixel section, which requires the written consent of the authors.