Sally: I could respond to your comment in 10 different ways. Not sure if this response will resonate with you, but here goes.

My recollection is that I've never not voted in a provincial/federal election in the last 47 years. A couple of times, I did not know who I was going to vote for, but I made the trek to the polls to cast my X. I think I missed most of the civic elections in the 12 years I was living in Edmonton. Without the parties, there is less noise to get people excited.

My take was that if a citizen does not take the time to digest the information, that citizen is serving society best by not voting. As a political canvasser, I often thought that if [the parties] are going to this great effort to identify support and get them to the polls, there is something wrong with our collective conscious to be manipulated to cast a vote.

But good canvassing wins close elections.

These days, so many citizens are digesting the wrong information. So I'm not sure admonishing people to "get informed" is working anymore.

And I don't believe there ever was a "good old days" in politics that we can somehow return to. The misdeeds of our wiser leaders are having an effect of where we are today.

Western democracy seems to be nearing the end of its life span. Isaac Asimov prophesied this in the 1950s.

-------------------

Recent polls are going against where I see the soft support forming. But there are left-wing motivations to keep the polls presenting a 50-50 race.

And if November 5 does prove a 50-50 race, I expect a lot of violence.

I'm kind of hoping my prediction of a Harris upset is true. But I would consider this as only a temporary reprieve. Maybe the USA needs to go through a Republican oligarchy sooner than later to finally do something about its broken democracy.