Hey, I promise, this is the last Canadian-election related post.
One of the interesting results from the election is that the Liberal candidate in Parkdale-High Park, a West End Toronto riding, Sam Bulte, was thrown out by Peggy Nash's NDP.
Why is that interesting?
Well, if you've been reading Boing Boing, you probably know. Sam Bulte had some heavy-duty friends. A few days before the election, she held a fundraiser that was sponsored in large part by lobbyists who are trying to get Canada's copyright laws changed. Basically, powerful interests who want RIAA-style onerous laws that benefit multinationals and corporate interests, at the expense of citizens. (Canada's current copyright laws are currently not quite as stacked against the consumer as U.S. laws are.)
Anyway, thanks to a lot of bloggers, chief among them law professor Michael Geist (whose site offers a pretty good link primer on the whole controversy) and Cory Doctorow, Bulte found herself, as the campaign wore on, cast as "Hollywood's Candidate." The perception being that her point of view was heavily, and perhaps unfairly influenced by powerful lobbyist backers.
Bulte did herself no favors, by casting the opinions of those who disagreed with her approach as "pro-downloading zealots.." (reducing a big, big issue to the RIAA-sponsored bogeyman talking points.)
Anyway, she lost. But it's how she lost that's really interesting. Her support from the 2004 election didn't really change that much -- but almost thirty percent more people came out to vote for her opponent. The turnout in the riding was 72 percent, which was about 8 percent or so higher than any other riding in the country. If the turnout experienced in this one riding had been reflected nationally, 123 of the House of Commons 308 seats would have been in different hands today. That's incredibly significant. And it indicates that just maybe, the combination of copyright, the taint of lobbyist influence, and the blogosphere had an impact.
More on that here.
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