Does a vote for Bronagh split the vote?
You have heard it at the door, in the group chat, maybe from a friend who likes Bronagh’s plan but is still planning to vote for someone else: a vote for her is a wasted vote, and it will just split the field and help the incumbent.
It is a fair question. It deserves a straight answer, not a slogan. Here is Bronagh’s, in her own words.
If accountability is what you want, the incumbent has had four years.
Accountability at City Hall comes up in almost every conversation about this election, Bronagh’s included. She agrees it matters. Her question back is a simple one: if accountability from the current administration is genuinely what decides your vote, what did four years in office actually deliver on it?
If we don’t have accountability now, and you had four years for that, and we still don’t have that, it seems like a change election to me.”
Strategic voting has a track record here, and it is not a good one.
Bronagh’s example is the 2015 federal election. Voters across the country were asked to set aside who they actually believed in and vote to block a worse outcome, on the promise that doing it, just this once, would bring electoral reform and make every future vote count for more.
Within a year, you got backtracking on that promise.”
Three elections have followed. Nothing about how much your vote counts has changed. The trade voters made in 2015 did not pay out then, and Bronagh’s point is that there is no reason to expect the same trade to pay out now, at any level of government.
The vote is yours.
Whether the ballot in front of you is federal, provincial, or municipal, Bronagh says the same thing every time: voting strategically is a legitimate choice. It is still a choice, though, and it belongs to you, not to anyone telling you how to use it.
If you believe that your voice doesn’t matter, and if you believe that there’s nothing you can do, then you’re right.”
One term, on purpose. That is what a vote for Bronagh buys.
A vote for a mayor who has committed publicly to one term only is not spent building her a career. It is spent on four years of decisions made without one eye on the next election, from someone who has said, on the record, exactly what that means to her.
I do not want to spend any of the four years that I’m serving doing anything other than serving. I do not want to be making decisions based on the fact that I want somebody to vote for me in 2030. All I want to do is serve.”
The government is not separate from you. It is you. You matter just as much as anybody who is getting paid by City Hall right now to represent you.”
Listen to the full episode
Forty-eight minutes, no soundbites: why she is running, what she would change at City Hall, and the vote-splitting question, answered at length.
Or listen on the episode page, or find The Craig Needles Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.