How Leadnow Will Push Strategic Voting to Defeat Tories
To avoid splits, organization asks supporters: ‘Vote with your head, not just your heart.’
On the opening afternoon of the Vancouver Folk Festival, a young woman wearing a purple Leadnow T-shirt approached folkies at the event’s main gate and asked them to sign The Pledge.
As the melancholic voice of folk legend Richard Thompson drifted through Jericho Park from a nearby workshop, Rachel Tetrault invited festival arrivals to join Leadnow’s “Vote Together” campaign to defeat Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.
Leadnow, which is modelled on the American liberal-left activist group MoveOn.org, is promoting the idea of strategic voting to defeat the Tories. Leadnow’s pledge asks people to vote for the local candidate — New Democrat, Liberal, even Green — who has the best chance to defeat the Tory candidate in their riding.
Later that night at Jericho Park, a roar of approval erupted when an emcee suggested that this could be the last Vancouver Folk Festival with Harper as prime minister. About 200 “folkies” signed the Leadnow pledge that late July weekend, joining the approximately 40,000 people who have committed to the group’s strategic voting strategy across Canada.
“I do feel that people we talked to at the festival — traditional NDP’ers and some Liberal supporters — are willing to consider voting for another party if that candidate could beat the Conservatives,” said Tetrault, who was hired by Leadnow to help organize its voting campaign.
The 27-year-old activist said that non-Conservative voters she’s met want to “make their vote count” and are frustrated that division on the liberal-left has handed victory to the Tories over the past three elections.
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