In a break from Sarah Failin' posts, here's something on the Canadian Election.
This site has been designed to help people who are considering voting strategically to help prevent the Conservatives from gaining a majority government on October 14. (Where's proportional representation when you need it? We'd have a different political landscape if some form of PR was in place including 14 (!) Green Party seats. It's not on the chart I link to but I saw one version that showed the Marijuana Party gaining a seat under PR as well – how fun would that be?)
Although strategic voting isn't the ideal, it's one of the few options people have under our current system to gain a larger measure of control over the impact of their vote. (Here in the West, how many elections have we had where we turn on the TV to see that the outcome has already been decided once the polls closed in Ontario?)
Luckily, the advice of the site on strategic voting says that I should vote for the party I was going to vote for anyhow. But if you're in a close riding and thinking of voting for a different party, you may want to reconsider.
(Oh, and apologies to my Conservative-voting readers. You are completely misguided but I love you too!)