Well that was a complete waste of time. Another Canadian Election has come and gone and I'm not sure I can tell the difference. With historically low voter turnout we're returning to another minority government where the Tories have the most seats in parliament, and the NDP and Liberal party combined do not have enough to stop them. So once again expect dysfunction as the Bloc hold the balance of power.

Was anything at all accomplished by that election? I suppose on the one hand it might mean we won't have another for a little while. Otherwise I think the main loser will be the environment, since the spin will be that the Liberal Green Shift didn't fly so therefore Canadians don't care if their planet goes to shit. This is of course not the case, but expect some spin to go this way.

I think the reality is that everyone lost this election. Harper failed to get his majority, Dion failed to make any gains, Layton failed at his new and more aggressive election strategy, and May failed to get a seat, although I doubt that was ever her intention. I myself also failed in my meager attempt to make two predictions, both of which were wrong. Perhaps only Duceppe won as he had the lowest performance expectations going in.

Of course the real tragedy is the pathetic voter turnout, which reflects both how boring this campaign has been, but also how the media failed the public in proving their inability to cover an election and make it interesting to people. Granted the Prime Minister didn't really offer much substance, just spent six weeks avoiding questions and skirting the issues, but that's no excuse. The news media can't assume that people will be interested when they use the same old formulas for coverage. Adding opportunities for people to express their own views doesn't make the coverage more interesting, nor does telling us about what happens "out there" on the Internet.

Somebody should be held accountable for this mess, and unfortunately I suspect there will be a lot of buck passing and people shirking their responsibility rather than taking the fall. We need new leadership in politics, but we also need new leadership when it comes to news and election coverage.

More of the same may result in us achieving the milestone of having less than 50% of the population turn out to vote! Now that's an anarchist's dream: the majority of the population voting for nobody.

Update: Bob Ashley pointed out to me that the twitter accounts for all the party leaders have been abandoned. Ghosts in the machine.