Reap what you sow.

Man, in case you haven't noticed, I love elections.

Before I discuss this evening's happenstances, let us first recall the last PEI election. Picture this: 2003. A Monday. There was a hurricane the night before. Huge power outages everywhere. The streets of Charlottetown were littered with debris from the hurricane. RCMP were advising people to stay off the roads. Yet still I trudged up to Queen Charlotte Junior High and voted. In the dark. It was awesome. That night, I went to my parents' place, and, because we had no power, we huddled around a battery-powered radio and listened to the results come in on CBC. I used checker pieces as a tote board. Black checkers (aka PC's): 23, red checkers (aka liberals): 4. Good times.

Tonight was the first time since I turned 18 that I didn't get to vote in the PEI election because, despite my efforts to the contrary, I really don't technically live there anymore (*sniff*). But still, I feel I had a strong interest in the outcome, and so was delighted to turn into CBC's election coverage. Ah, Bruce Rainnie. I love CBC's election coverage. I love elections!

Anyway, I spent the first hour of the "results show" watching the coverage on Newsworld and calling home every time something exciting happened ("Did you see that? One Liberal!" Did you see that? Two Liberals!!" "How come the pictures of the NDP and Green party candidates look like mug shots?"). Then my family told me I could only call every half hour, and not every two minutes. Then at 8:00 I watched the rest of the results on CBC's internet feed, while listening on the phone to the tv coverage at home and inserting witty commentary when someone would talk to me. The two were off by about a minute, so it was rather confusing.

That's how dedicated I am to my elections.

Anyways, I was quite surprised by the outcome, as I didn't expect things to sway this far, and I'm not quite sure what this is going to mean in the long term. But I do know that the next PEI election date has already been chosen, so perhaps I can plan to actually be home for it.