Rustad isn't your bog standard anti-vaxxer loon. If elected, he wants to put public health authorities in front of a quote "Nuremberg 2.0"-style tribunal for vaccine policies post-Covid. Strangely, another Conservative candidate publicly called for Trump opponents to kill themselves and provided instructions to that end. Other candidates have similar weird positions about Muslims and American politics, and the party's ad spend has been subsidized by Albertan right-wing extremists. Good luck, BC.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 6:16 PM on October 18 [4 favorites]

Oh boy, BC, I hope the best for y'all.
posted by Kitteh at 6:28 PM on October 18

I was wondering if a post would go up for this. We're expecting dreadful weather in the lower mainland over the next day which I hope doesn't depress turnout too much. On the other hand, we've smashed the record for advanced voting with a million votes already cast (28% of registered electors, 20% of the population!)

I may come back with more links. But most of all please hope for us! Many good things have happened or are underway under this government, and many bad things will happen if the BC Conservatives are elected. They're being penalized by confusion about the difference between federal and provincial politics and parties, not to mention their willingness to act against some very powerful interests and piss off certain powerful people.
posted by lookoutbelow at 7:01 PM on October 18 [4 favorites]

Advance voted last week and have been showing off my I Voted sticker on my phone since! (and, up until Wednesday, telling everyone about how easy and great advance voting is).

It is rare that Canadian politics gives me anything to smile about lately, but David Eby got a chuckle out of me a few months ago when he coined the term Pierre Poilievre baloney factory
posted by btfreek at 7:13 PM on October 18

I live not far from where Chip Wilson (founder of Lululemon, billionaire, owner of one of the most expensive homes in the province, and Vancouver's discount store version of Elon musk) resides. Recently, he "delighted" neighbours and passer-bys with a giant sign on his giant house calling the NDP (current ruling provincial party, kinda center-left to the extent that it wants to tax the 1%, not the middle class) a bunch of communists, and urging all and sundry to vote conservative.

The sign was promptly defaced with derogatory comments and not-very-Canadian epithets. Local yummy-mummies and dog walkers snickered at the bad words. It was then removed.

He followed up with an editorial in a local paper with the usual boilerplate complaining that taxing the rich would dissuade courageous innovators from taking risks that lead to great businesses that create jobs for a grateful populace, and that supporters of the NDP are lazy good-for-nothings who want handouts in exchange for doing no productive work. You know, the usual brilliantly convincing Republican talking points.

In return, David Eby, our current provincial Premier and NDP leader spoke to the press, with a satirical billboard that happened to be in the shot.

A very "Vancouver" rivalry.

Meanwhile, the conservatives (who inherited a weird coalition that spans the center right to the batshit far-right) are busy trying to tamp down on the steady diet of embarrassing leaks, as their more unsavoury members keep having to disavow earlier tweets and revelations. John Rustad is adopting a strategy of silence on his views, hoping that just saying "axe the tax" and "tough on crime" will do the trick. (NB. For non-Canadians, "the tax" is the Carbon tax (an initiative to raise the cost of fossil fuels to reduce emissions and the bete-noire of Conservatives (who think Canada should keep maximizing its oil and gas industries). Also, alliterative three-word slogans is the strategy used by Federal Conservatives to demagogue their way to victory: axe the tax, build the homes, stop the crimes, empty promises with no plan to back them up other than leveraging discontent). If Poillievre (Federal) styles himself after Trump, Rustad makes me think of a rumpled version of RFK Jr: anti-vax, climate skeptic, you know, what some op-eds call an "out of the box thinker". Grrr.

Still, there's a rich irony is seeing these giant, blue, vote Conservative banners on the side of mega-mansions along our Golden Mile.

Let's hope our fellow British Columbians come to their senses. "We don't need this fascist groove thang", as Heaven 17 used to sing.....
posted by Bigbootay. Tay! Tay! Blam! Aargh... at 7:57 PM on October 18 [10 favorites]

My riding has a women who sells MLMs and other sketchy stuff as the Conservative candidate, a Dr from Kelowna General as the Independent, and a long time and much respected city counsellor running for the NDP. I'm hoping that personal respect will flip a very, very conservative riding to the NDP.
posted by Canageek at 8:23 PM on October 18 [3 favorites]

I voted last weekend. Maybe I'm wrong but I perceive a perceptible shift away from advance polls because you are going to be out of town to a system where polls are open whenever, last day of voting is tomorrow.

And did I get a cool as fuck sticker? No, I did not
Therefore I'm completely disattached to the results and I just want the whole system burnt down. And thats how you birth anarchists.
posted by Keith Talent at 11:15 PM on October 18 [1 favorite]

Hey, Keith Talent, I voted early too, and was also denied the sticker I had been hoping for!

I will spend the rest of my days making the case for BC to adopt Michigan's screaming-werewolf-tearing-its-shirt-off sticker that a US kid designed: Max-the-tax! Keep-the-vax! Stick-the-wolf!
posted by Bigbootay. Tay! Tay! Blam! Aargh... at 11:25 PM on October 18 [6 favorites]

I’m mad at the BC NDP for the same reason I’m pissed at the federal liberals - they promised voting reform and then didn’t do it. Getting rid of fptp would have kept the conservatives out basically forever.
posted by congen at 6:04 AM on October 19 [3 favorites]

When I lived in BC, I supported the NDP, but John Horgan beraying the province over the Site C dam, and then David Eby ratfucking the leadership race to edge out Anjali Appadurai rubbed me very much the wrong way.

Still, no province deserves to get screwed by Conservative lunatics. And I don't think the Greens have what it takes to win this soo......go NDP, I guess?
posted by mrjohnmuller at 6:11 AM on October 19 [3 favorites]

One can always hope for an NDP minority who can form a coalition with the Greens. I think the Greens would not let the NDP backslide on electoral reform this time.
posted by ssg at 6:54 AM on October 19 [2 favorites]

Can't vote Conservative, can't vote for anyone who would split the vote and risk a Conservative win. The race is too close to take that chance.

I was one of the record breaking first-day voters. Also didn't get a sticker, but wasn't looking for them so maybe I missed it. I'm not sure why everyone wants one, tbh.

Edited to add: Electoral reform is a non-starter. There are so many better systems, but all of them require more than a 30 second read of an explanation to understand. Sadly, enough of our population either doesn't understand, doesn't want to understand, or understands that any reform would kill their party almost permanently. And the combination of all these groups is enough to ensure we can't reach the threshold to change. Reform has to be legislated without public involvement if we want it to make any progress.
posted by Snowflake at 8:44 AM on October 19

BC has had three referendums on electoral reform in the last 20 years, including in 2018 in response to an NDP electoral promise. No dice, yet.
posted by lookoutbelow at 9:57 AM on October 19

Conspiracy Theory Milhouse, also known as John Rustad, is an equivocating goon who won't quite come out and denounce some of the odious comments his candidates have made in over the years.
The Conservatives were pretty much a non entity as far as political parties in British Columbia go then Kevin Falcon's insane ineptitude as leader of the more traditional right wing party, BC United, resulted in a massive implosion allowing The Conservatives to step into the resulting vacuum on the political spectrum.
So, we have the unseemly spectacle of conspiracy theorists, residential school apologists, climate change denialisms, out right racists, and festering wing nuts of all stripes poised to grab a level of political power they have never come close to before in this province.
Here's a handy guide to this feckless goon squad, it's bonkers, but, here we are.
I wish everyone well, as well as our province, and I dearly hope the Cons do not get in.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 11:25 AM on October 19 [2 favorites]

I woke up with a cold but still braved the weather to go out and vote (I masked up, ofc) in a very safe NDP riding (Burnaby E). Turnout matters.

No lineups because there are, literally, a dozen voting places within a few kilometers of my apartment. All I needed to vote was to present my MSP (medical services plan) card (or any other government issued photo id). They had a cool scantron thing that counted the ballot immediately while retaining the paper record.

The voting place even had a "vote by mail" drop-off so last minute mail-in ballots could still be counted.

No sticker, though =(
posted by porpoise at 12:12 PM on October 19 [1 favorite]

BC has had three referendums on electoral reform in the last 20 years, including in 2018 in response to an NDP electoral promise. No dice, yet.

Yet?!? Call me crazy but three votes against electoral reform tell me the people have spoken.
posted by monkeymike at 12:18 PM on October 19

Call me crazy but three votes against electoral reform tell me the people have spoken.

Well, the first one was actually 58% for electoral reform (STV), so that's hardly a vote against it (the threshold was set at 60%). And the last one was ridiculously complicated and the materials the government put out were confusing and made the whole thing seem incredibly complex. It was clear that the NDP decided they'd rather stick with FPTP and went about the referendum process in a way that it was very unlikely to succeed.

We should have left FPTP behind in 2005 after the clear majority of people voted against it, but here we are nearly 20 years later still worrying about splitting the vote.
posted by ssg at 12:39 PM on October 19 [3 favorites]

I voted last weekend. Maybe I'm wrong but I perceive a perceptible shift away from advance polls because you are going to be out of town to a system where polls are open whenever, last day of voting is tomorrow.

You used to need an accepted reason to vote early, now you can just do it.

Voted early Sunday before heading out of town for work and it was the most painless interaction I've ever had at a church or school (my polling place was both). Three lines, only two people there (myself and my spouse), and the fancy scanner so I didn't have to perform a test of origami to deposit my vote.

No sticker though. And no mini billboard for post voting pictures (I think that was a federal thing).
posted by Mitheral at 1:56 PM on October 19

I got a sticker -it blew off my jacket in the wind and rain within 5 minutes.

For all BC/Vancouver/Canada’s issues though, holy *shit* do they have it together with actual voting. Always impeccably well run, incredibly easy to register, tons of options to vote and lots of time to do it in - it’s very impressive.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:36 PM on October 19

No lineups, took 5 minutes, very easy. I'm wearing my sticker :)

@monkeymike not necessarily - I seem to recall at least one of those referendums was phrased extremely confusingly.
posted by elizabot at 2:58 PM on October 19

If you want to avoid TV personalities and ads Eric Grenier and Philipe Fournier are livestreaming results on YouTube starting at 8:00 PST.
posted by Depressed Obese Nightmare Man at 4:28 PM on October 19

elizabot: @monkeymike not necessarily - I seem to recall at least one of those referendums was phrased extremely confusingly.

That reminds me of an interesting previously about electoral reform which led me to Referendums: A tool for informed decision-making?. Apparently a referendum is what you do when you want the answer to be "no", and there's often a 20-percentage-point swing from public support in polling for something to what the referendum result ends up being.
posted by clawsoon at 4:29 PM on October 19 [1 favorite]

That oppo dossier Phlegmco(tm) mentions [“handy guide to this feckless goon squad”] is like nothing I’ve ever seen in Canadian politics. The original link to the dossier included in the PressProgress article has been taken down, but someone on Reddit has linked to an archived copy: https://www.reddit.com/r/britishcolumbia/comments/1fx6671/comment/lqmk63d/.

All the research in the dossier is stuff that is or was publicly available on social media or media (some has been deleted): Twitter, Facebook, news articles and TV/radio interviews.

Just to give flavour, the Table of Contents subsections include:

• Conspiracies & Extremism
• Misogynistic or Weird
• Racism or Racial Insensitivity
• Antisemitism & Holocaust Comparisons
• Climate Change [Denialism] & Environment
• Medical Quackery
• Reconciliation [anti-Indigenous, pro-colonial]
• Crazy Views on US Politics

There are approximately 40 candidates mentioned in the nearly 200-page document, along with a handful of campaign managers and party board members. It’s wild.

Shame on Kevin Falcon for forcing his party to merge with a group of people he was actively doing opposition research on and declaring as dangerous mere weeks before. On Aug. 27, he told reporters, “In this day and age, we cannot have a situation where you have candidates running for office that believe that cellphone towers are genocidal weapons and that credit cards are a sign of the antichrist, and that we’re all heading for some kind of rapture. This is insanity. We have to have common-sense people that are bringing forward common-sense solutions to the challenges we face in British Columbia.” On Aug. 28, he announced that his party would be merging with the same party he had blasted the day before.

Many (most?) of the BC United MLAs/candidates had no idea that was coming ahead of time. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for them, because their party practically ruined BC in their 16 year reign, but it was a sucker punch from Falcon. The BC Cons must have promised Falcon something really shiny in return for his cowardice and betrayal.

I’m going to be plunged into a pretty bad headspace if the BC Cons win the election. Do I like every single thing the NDP have done since in power? No, but I think they’ve been a steady governing power through some pretty difficult times, they did a lot better than the BC Liberals would have done, and there is zero question they are better than this pack of uninformed bigots called the BC Conservatives.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 5:34 PM on October 19

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