So there are now 90 other candidates in Pierre Poilievre’s riding. Made my day. You honestly can’t make this shit up.
I know there was sarcasm there, but Canadian federal elections are surprisingly easy (to you, maybe). There are no downballot elections at all. Candidates are listed in alphabetical order by last name. A sample ballot might look like this:
ANDREWS, Jason. Liberal Party of Canada.
BENSON, Charles. New Democratic Party of Canada.
DANIELS, Nicholas. Conservative Party of Canada.
KING, Isaac. Independent.
McNAIR, Helen. Green Party of Canada.
O’CONNOR, Gregory. Christian Heritage Party.
PERKINS, Frank, People’s Party of Canada.
WILSON, Frances. Independent.
And that’s it, that’s all. You select one, and mark your selection with an X in the space indicated, using a pencil that is provided. No voting machines, no downballot races. Kind of hard to fraud that.
Did the Trump-backed candidate win? No? Fraud!
See, it’s easy. You just have to have the “right” attitude.
This is of course laudable, highly laudable, as befits a functioning liberal democracy. But when I amble up to the primary school on a Saturday in a couple of weeks time, whether in PJs or something more suitable for the occasion, to exercise my vote the polling attendant will ask for my name. I respond. They consult their copy of the electoral roll. They read out the address associated. I say “Yes”. Such consists ID. They cross my name off, and give me the Senate and HoR ballot papers.
So you Canawegians might be able to conduct an election faster than us, but maybe not conduct the poll itself. Though of course it’s not a race.
So give your collective selves a gold star, but please don’t get complacent.
To lose one democracy in north America may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness.
Question.
Is there any perception of “donkey voting” on Canadian ballots? ie a voter ticking box/s in the sequence listed giving some small advantage to Andrews over Wilson?
More likely it’s a function of having both compulsory voting and preference voting (IRV) here but for each electorate the order of position of candidate names on the ballot for HoR and Senate is done by a randomised draw, a bit like Lotto.
No. A vote for Andrews and Wilson would result in a spoiled ballot, and the ballot would be rejected. We’re FTPT, so you only get one shot.
But I get the point about whether people at the top of the alphabetical get some advantage from the “stuff it, just vote for anyone” mentality. I once had a discussion about it, years ago, with the person in charge of an internal election in the party I then belonged to - not persuaded (even though I 'm low in the alphabet).
We actually have a procedure about this here in Oregon. Before each election, the Sec of State generates a randomized alphabet and sends it to the county clerks. Candidates are listed for each position “alphabetized” according to that random alphabet.
It’s not perfect. Ideally, different voters would get different lists so that each candidate would be at the top of 1/n ballots, where n is the number of candidates for that position.
The reason American elections use machines and shit is exactly this. They have to vote for more things.
I was visiting my buddy in California once shortly before the election and they were sent a booklet just to explain all the ballot initiatives. Between federal and state votes, they had to make about two dozen choices. Using pencils was not a reasonable option.
Perhaps this was before California went to all-vote-by-mail. With the length of ballots in the US (especially California), voting in the comfort of one’s home is superior to voting at the local precinct. Unfortunately, only 8 states have this for all voters.
Something similar to this is done in Luxembourg.
Every election, the parties create posters featuring their roster of candidates. A display board is mounted in every city’s central square (or in each neighborhood in the bigger cities) with all the party posters. It looks like this.
Every party is assigned a number, so if the voter wants to vote a single-party ballot, they can use the number. Campaign materials refer to this number: “To support the Greens this year, vote 5!” Or whatever.
These numbers are randomly assigned for each election. So one year, the ADR (our right-wing xenophobic populist party) might get number 1, while the next year the Communist party might get number 1. The posters on the displays are ordered per this numerical sequence.
The biggest parties (the center-right CSV, the techno-centrist DP, and the leftist Socialists) always grumble a bit that the minority Pirates and others get equal treatment despite much lower popular support, but it’s unlikely to change.
Maybe the best thing about the Canadian (and other parliamentary) electoral systems is the brevity of the campaign season. I daresay your politicians do put themselves out for pre-electoral notice and positive impressions, but it’s not the near-permanent campaigning that’s taken over the American model, at least at the federal level.
That’s important, but I think an even more important point is that the PM only holds office so long as they have the confidence of their party and the Commons.
If they do something completely contrary to the public interest, such as crashing the economy, they can be removed from office by a simple vote of their party or the Commons, as Liz “Lettuce” Truss discovered.
Application of this point to current events is left as an exercise for the reader.
Point bitterly taken.
I see what you did there, but Trump seems to have the broad support of his party and thus the legislature. I’m not saying I understand, respect or condone that. What surprises me is the degree of sycophancy.
Trump: (Climbs in Tesla. Gets long tie stuck in door. Crashes into wall of rose garden.)
Vance: Masterfully done, sir.
Congress: In honour of this great success, we are changing the name of Washington to Trumpminister.
Good news that so many people are motivated to run, I suppose, but that also means that the anti-Poilievre vote will be split 90 ways.
Does plurality win, or does that go to a run-off, or is there some other procedure?
The internal dynamic is different. Every PM knows they have to keep their caucus onside, and every MP knows that if things get bad, they have the power to pull the plug, as happened with Chrétien and Justin Trudeau.
That has never been the case with the US President. No President has ever been successfully removed by the impeachment process. The closest was Nixon, who resigned while facing impeachment.
That’s one, in 226 years.
Canada has had two PMs pushed out by their party in the past twenty years.
The UK has had three in just the past six years.
If all that it took to kick Trump out was a majority vote in the House of Representatives, the dynamic would be much different. Every congressperson would have more power, and Trump could not just dictate to them what he wanted.
Yes. First-past-the-post. But the large number of candidates in poilivre’s riding isn’t likely to affect the outcome much. It’s generally a safe Tory seat. Plus, we generally know when a candidate is a serious contender or just a fringe nut. The nutters don’t generally decide the outcomes.
ETA: that’s too many “generally”s. I must be tired. 
They aren’t really running. They have no signs, no committees, no web site. This is strictly a protest against first past the post. Most of them won’t get a single vote.
So what’s needed to get on the official list of candidates? Are we talking a one-page form and a $20 filing fee, or is it 10,000 signatures and $5,000?