I’ve been a Green supporter for a very long time. I even ran as a candidate for the BC Greens way back. I hate it, but I don’t really have a problem with this ruling. The Greens rose to our highest levels of support when we ran a full slate of candidates across the country, and while we have on occasion chosen to not run in a few strategic ridings (don’t blame us, it’s FPTP), 15 ridings fewer wouldn’t be a problem if we were running everywhere else.
The big caveat though is that it’s really hard to run a full slate as a small party. The vetting alone is a brutal (and costly) amount of work, and getting 343 candidates mobilised in time for a short-notice election is near impossible for a small party. In other words, when election dates are controlled by the ruling party, elections (and debate rules) will inevitably favour larger parties, diminishing our democracy.
The rules seem reasonable to me, and objectively we didn’t meet them, so we shouldn’t be included. I just think it’s worth noting exactly why we didn’t meet them.
Thanks for this. I also support the Green Party and was furious they failed to meet the requirements, but blamed it on pure incompetence. Your reasoning at least explains their failure in a way that makes sense and doesn’t require them to be complete crayon eating buffoons.
I still feel like as an up and coming party you have one fucking job: meet the requirements to participate, so their failure still grates on my nerves but not so much now.
I’ve been a Green supporter for a very long time. I even ran as a candidate for the BC Greens way back. I hate it, but I don’t really have a problem with this ruling. The Greens rose to our highest levels of support when we ran a full slate of candidates across the country, and while we have on occasion chosen to not run in a few strategic ridings (don’t blame us, it’s FPTP), 15 ridings fewer wouldn’t be a problem if we were running everywhere else.
The big caveat though is that it’s really hard to run a full slate as a small party. The vetting alone is a brutal (and costly) amount of work, and getting 343 candidates mobilised in time for a short-notice election is near impossible for a small party. In other words, when election dates are controlled by the ruling party, elections (and debate rules) will inevitably favour larger parties, diminishing our democracy.
The rules seem reasonable to me, and objectively we didn’t meet them, so we shouldn’t be included. I just think it’s worth noting exactly why we didn’t meet them.
Thanks for this. I also support the Green Party and was furious they failed to meet the requirements, but blamed it on pure incompetence. Your reasoning at least explains their failure in a way that makes sense and doesn’t require them to be complete crayon eating buffoons.
I still feel like as an up and coming party you have one fucking job: meet the requirements to participate, so their failure still grates on my nerves but not so much now.