The past few days have seen a surge in signups, and will likely continue until Friday, the last day of registration. Latest statistics on pair voters as of Wednesday, Oct 9 11:59 pm:

• Green – 418
• NDP – 354
• Liberal – 212
• Bloc Québécois – 25
• Conservative – 23
• Libertarian – 2
• Animal Alliance Environment – 1
• Communist – 1
• Marijuana – 1

Total: 1040

Predicted number of total signups by Friday, October 10: > 1000

Available swap votes by party

Here is the data that matters most. The number of voter pairs is limited by the number of voters in swing ridings willing to vote for each party.

Potential swapped votes in swing ridings per party. Note that the actual number of total available votes is less because someone who is willing to vote for multiple parties is counted more than once:

• Liberal – 328
• NDP – 196
• Bloc – 18
• Conservative – 13
• Green – 11
• Marijuana – 7
• Communist – 6
• Libertarian – 2

View breakdown of available votes by riding.

The swing ridings are determined by the latest riding-by-riding projections at democraticSPACE.com.

May Day – Green party needs swing voters in Central Nova (and elsewhere)

There is tremendous interest by Green party supporters to swap their vote to support Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party. Alas, most are going to be disappointed unless their is a sudden surge in registrations in May’s riding. I suggest people contact local media there, and anyone they know in or near the riding to get the word out that hundreds of votes are available for Elizabeth May, if there are some voters, likely Liberals who are willing to swap. The Conservative, NDP and Green parties are all in the race for the Central Nova seat.

Overall, there are far more Green party voters wanting to swap votes than there are people available to swap with in the few ridings the Greens have a chance of winning.

Note: both of these sites provide analysis for the traditonal form of strategic voting, which means voting for a party to keep another party from winning, rather than the party you prefer to support. A better alternative, in my biased view, is pair voting. Still, the information they provide helps to understand ones’ voting options.

Vote For Environment

http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/

This is hands down the slickest strategic voting site out there. You can find your riding 3 ways, including an interactive Google map. Somehow they pull in poll data from multiple sources, and use that information to update election result predictions according to their voting algorithm. Each riding has its own page, complete with a Google map and a number of statistics:

The bar graph on the left presents the number of votes each party received in that riding in 2006 modified by each party’s current standing in this week’s cumulative polls.

By changing the drop-down menu below the bar graph you can choose to show the results of the last election or the results of the last election modified by any one individual poll taken during the week.

Note: VoteforEnvironment only offers a pick when strategic voting is necessary to elect or retain a pro-environment candidate in a given riding (read: someone who isn’t Conservative).

Although VFE is a partisan site to help voters decide how to vote strategically against Conservative candidates, even Conservative supporters can look at the polling data to assist them in how to vote in their riding and to decide if it is worth pair voting or not.

DemocraticSPACE

http://www.democraticspace.com/

Greg Morrow and his team do a solid job every election on their predictions. This is a non-partisan web site. Every few days they post their current projections, including riding by riding predictions which you can download. On Monday Sept 29 they published their strategic vote recommendations (en Francais) by riding for supporters of each party.

Holy cow. In Elizabeth May’s words:

“I’d rather have no Green seats and Stephen Harper lose, than a full caucus that stares across the floor at Stephen Harper as prime minister, because his policies are too dangerous,” she said.

So determined is May to keep Harper from power she also told the Star she wants Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion and NDP Leader Jack Layton to join her in a pact to beat Conservatives candidates.

The Green, Liberal and New Democratic parties should prevent vote-splitting that would favour Conservatives, and carve up electoral ridings according to who has the best chance of winning, May said. “We sit down and say, `Who has the best chance of winning in all these ridings?’ What I’ve been calling for is proportional representation by other means.”

Pair voting is one method of strategic voting that lets people still get a vote for their preferred party. I doubt any party will come out and endorse pair voting because it is new and less understood in Canada, so that means those of us inspired by the idea need to reach out to fellow party supporters and invite them to participate.

Read the rest of the Toronto Star article.

It seems pair voting is now one of the hot stories at this point in the election. I’ve gotten over a dozen requests for interviews over the past week,

Pair vote tour, coming to a town near you:

• Sudbury. Interview with CBC Radio One Sudbury tomorrow (Friday Sept 19) at 7:15 am. I’ll be explaining how pair vote works and how someone in a northern Ontario riding might consider pair voting. Hopefully the kids racing around in the house won’t drown out my 5 minutes of fame.
• Montréal. Jean-Francois Ranger, pair voter in Montréal will speak with Radio Canada at 12 tomorrow. Not sure when it will air, but we’ll put a link to the video on their web site once its published. Go JF go!
• Toronto. Change a Click Away (NOW Toronto) My interview didn’t make to the edited version, probably because of its partisan nature, but vote swapping is mentioned.
• Edmonton. I’ll trade my Harper for your Layton. For anyone who doesn’t vote Conservative, there is little point in voting, unless

Where next? You can decide where the next story happens by contacting your local media. That’s all it takes. Most are looking for someone local to tell their story of why they are vote swapping, what the difference it makes.

You’ve inspired me with your stories, I encourage you to share them with those in your community. Real change happens from the bottom up. Let’s send Ottawa a message that the voting system status quo has to go.

Update: A News Ottawa did a story on pair voting (see video), including our very own Kris Joseph and an awful shot of myself near the end. That aside, they reported something I hadn’t heard before, that tricking someone into voting for a particular candidate is an offence under the Elections Act:

The verdict is in; Elections Canada has concluded that online vote-swapping schemes aren’t illegal. James Hale, a spokesman for the federal agency, said that the simple act of encouraging someone to vote in a particular way is all right under the Canada Elections Act. It’s also permissible to invite people to participate in an organized strategic voting plan, whether on the Internet or by other means.

Nevertheless, they warn voters to be careful if they decide to participate for a number of reasons. One is that they could potentially be misled by someone acting under multiple or false identities to trick them into voting for a particular candidate. If such an act were to occur, Hale says the person who misled them would, be guilty of an offence under the Elections Act.

Nice to see Elections Canada finally made a decision on vote swapping.. Now no one needs to worry about legal issues. EC is right in pointing out that there is some risk involved – there is no guarantee that the person you pair with will carry out the vote swap. But, when your vote in your own riding has no chance at all, that’s an easy risk to take.

Canada’s electoral watchdog has deemed online vote-swapping to be legal but warned that the scheme could be used to dupe voters into casting their ballot for certain parties.

Elections Canada began looking into the issue after a Facebook group surfaced last week urging people living in ridings likely to have tight races to swap votes as a way to keep Stephen Harper’s Conservatives from winning a majority.

James Hale, a spokesman for the federal agency, said the act of encouraging someone to vote in a particular way is allowed under the Elections Act.

It’s also acceptable for people to invite voters to participate in an organized strategic voting plan, whether on the internet or through other means, he said.

But, he said, “electors should be cautious for a couple of reasons.”

Voters could potentially be misled by someone acting under a false identity who tricks them into voting a particular way, which would be an offence under the Elections Act.

Since people cast ballots alone in a voting booth, it is also difficult to verify whether they actually voted as promised.

Also, the agency warned, it is illegal for money or “material benefit” to pass hands as part of a voting arrangement.

“It’s not an offence to tell your friend you think they should vote in a certain way, and it’s not an offence to say ‘Yeah, I think that’s a great idea.’ It is an offence to accept money or to offer money for that,” said Hale.

Read the rest of the article.