I’ve seen that term used by more then a few journalists and politicians hostile to the Dion/May pact in Central Nova used to describe the poor 10-11000 Liberal voters who apparently are “disenfranchised” because of Dion’s decision to strategically ask them to support an ally and to remove a Conservative Minister (and one who is the more deserving to be removed for his past behaviour).
As I’ve said to a few people, if you disagree with the move, that’s fine.. but stop using the term “disenfranchising” to describe Liberal voters there.
The dictionary term for “disenfranchising” is : to deprive of a franchise, of a legal right, or of some privilege or immunity; especially : to deprive of the right to vote
Liberal voters in Central Nova have not been deprived of the right to vote. I think using that as a description of a strategy where a Liberal leader has asked them to strategically vote for someone whom he considers an ally in a riding doesn’t do justice to the term… when you’re using a definition applied to describe what Canadian women, first nations, and ethnic minorities experienced until various times in the 20th century.
I get what you’re saying, here, but this is depriving people of their right to vote as they want to vote. I lived in the U.S. for most of my life and was forced to choose between a right-wing party and a centre-right party–and believe me, that feels like disenfranchisement. (And it’s why I left.)
Also, if you’re going to ask people to be more exact about their use of language, then you are going to want to stop referring to this as Dion “asking them to strategically vote for someone whom he considers an ally.” If he were simply to ask them to do that, I wouldn’t find it at all objectionable (though admittedly, still baffling), because it would still be up to the voters to comply or not comply with his request. But engineering things so that people can’t vote in the way they’d prefer to is something well beyond “asking.”