I have no faith in politicians. I have even less faith in voters.

This has been, without a doubt, the strangest, most bewildering election campaign I've ever seen.
Ontario's manufacturing jobs are going up in smoke; every week sees at least one guy out on parole murdering somebody; our health care is still substandard; our infrastructure is slowly crumbling away; and oh, yes, the incumbent has the gall to run on his record of unparallelled lies, broken promises, and even a mini-Adscam (as befits a Liberal government). Are we talking about any of this? Well, some of us are trying to. But it's all being drowned out in a sea of faith-based school funding.
John Tory has killed the issue, saying now he'll have a free vote in the Legislature rather than implementing it outright. Conservatives will say this shows he listened to the electorate. Liberals will retort that his principles are for sale. Both have a point. My view, for what it's worth: at least Tory broke a promise before being elected, rather than waiting until afterwards like...well, I won't name any Daltons.
I've been watching Tory carefully, daring him to win back my vote. He hasn't. On the one hand, I sort of understand why he continues to hammer away at McGuinty's broken promises. I think he figures if he repeats it often enough, maybe people will care. Myself, I can't figure out why people don't care. Recent polling shows McGuinty has an overwhelming share of the female vote. My wife says this just proves how stupid women are.
Maybe people disregard broken promises because they're so common. I mean, does anybody believe Tory will follow through on his? He says he wants to cut $1.5 billion while cutting taxes at the same time. I know I could do it: I could cut at least a third of the government, and nobody would notice. But that assumes some parallel universe where sanity is permitted to exist in politics. None of us live there, least of all John Tory.
Anyway, given that the message about McGuinty's duplicity isn't getting through, you'd think Tory would change course and concentrate on his priorities. I hate to bring up Mike Harris again--he's such a polarizing figure--but he ran textbook campaigns, staying on message and sticking to his agenda. Tory could have learned from that, but chooses not to. Not the mark of a leader.
Anyway, it looks as if the Liberals will come back with a majority, giving Dalton license to break even more promises. Depressing.

More depressing: the number of people who claim to have no idea about the referendum taking place on election day. These people should be disenfranchised, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not just saying that: I really do believe there ought to be some rudimentary test of political awareness required in order to vote.
How the hell do you miss radio and television commercials, pop up Internet ads, full page newspaper blurbs, and endless pamphlets in your mailbox? (I've gotten six so far.) To my mind, such willful ignorance indicates a total indifference to the political process. It's only fair that the political process should be just as indifferent to people like this.