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Bullying or shaming won’t get writer to vote

Voting for an unsupported candidate or spoiling ballot not good options

Re: Green supporter adds voice to election fray (Letters, Dec. 12)

When writer Charles Hilton suggests that voting should perhaps be compulsory in Canada as it is in Australia, he unwittingly touches on one of the main reasons why I and many other eligible voters didn’t cast ballots in the recent Victoria byelection.

There is nothing that non-voters like me resent more than constantly hearing political partisans stating, or implying, that people who don’t vote aren’t being good citizens.

None of us should ever allow ourselves to be intimidated or bullied into voting for any party or candidate that we don’t really want to support. Nor should we feel obligation to waste our time and energy going to the polls simply to spoil a ballot.

Gordon Pollard

Victoria