{"id":493,"date":"2004-07-07T14:34:13","date_gmt":"2004-07-07T22:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chriscorrigan.com\/blogs\/?p=493"},"modified":"2004-07-07T14:34:13","modified_gmt":"2004-07-07T22:34:13","slug":"chandler-feels-like-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/chandler-feels-like-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Chandler feels like me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Michale Valpy of the Globe and Mail ran a series about a 23 year old Saskatchewan voter called Chandler.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/servlet\/ArticleNews\/TPPrint\/LAC\/20040703\/VALPY03\/TPFocus\/\">Turns out that he felt like I did on June 28.<\/a>: <\/p>\n<div>&#8220;Having voted, Chandler felt no satisfaction with what he&#8217;d done.<\/p>\n<p>He still saw no real connection between his vote and how Canada is run. Democracy, as he said repeatedly, has different dynamics: consensus building among citizens around a specific issue; informed and well-researched submissions to civil servants and cabinet ministers; influence from lobbyists.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I am not drawn to electoral politics,&#8217; he said simply.<\/p>\n<p>And if you don&#8217;t vote, you can&#8217;t complain? &#8216;I am not impressed by that argument,&#8217; he replied.<\/p>\n<p>Knowing he&#8217;s a practising Roman Catholic (I&#8217;d driven him to mass with his grandparents), I said: &#8216;Look, voting is like taking part in the Eucharist; it&#8217;s a symbolic and representative act. It&#8217;s not an end in itself, because to be a Christian you&#8217;ve got to be more fully engaged in your faith, and to be a citizen you&#8217;ve got to be more fully engaged in your civic society. But the sym- bolism of the vote is important.'&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michale Valpy of the Globe and Mail ran a series about a 23 year old Saskatchewan voter called Chandler. Turns out that he felt like I did on June 28.: &#8220;Having voted, Chandler felt no satisfaction with what he&#8217;d done. He still saw no real connection between his vote and how Canada is run. Democracy, as he said repeatedly, has different dynamics: consensus building among citizens around a specific issue; informed and well-researched submissions to civil servants and cabinet ministers; influence from lobbyists. &#8216;I am not drawn to electoral politics,&#8217; he said simply. And if you don&#8217;t vote, you can&#8217;t &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-7X","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}