In other news, beer and popcorn opened strongly on the TSX today.
Wowsers.
It’s becoming very clear that the political system we have won’t work any more. In a sense it is an ideal compromise, because nobody is very happy (cities feel underrepresented by geography, rural areas feel underrepresented by population). But it really is turning into two solitudes of urban/rural (along with all the other solitudes of English/French, East/West).
Time for electoral reform. I don’t see how there could be another majority government.
What our American friends may not know is that there are two days of voting here. The first day’s vote is just for funsies. Get out to the polls today people, no take-backs on this one!
Uh…
Huh?
You see the same divide in the U.S. Party lines aren’t split so much by geography as they are by urban/rural areas. Go look at a county map of the U.S., and see where the red and blue areas are. Even in the bluest states, the rural areas are Republican, and even in the reddest states, the most densely populated areas are Democrat. New York and California aren’t Democratic because the whole region is Democratic - they’re democratic because they have huge high density population centers.
Which is to say, I assume you’re joking, but I don’t see why it’s supposed to be funny.
This is a bad thing?
In what form?
Honestly, I’ll take any form of PR at this point, but the most natural one to success is the BC-STV system, or the mega-ridings idea, with 2 to 7 people being elected from one large area. It doesn’t make majorities impossible, but still lets other groups get a say.
There were a bunch of e-mails sent before the election claiming that it would be held over two days, that appears to have been aimed at affected turnout.
“altering turnout” :smack:
I know plenty of people who voted at advance poll stations because they were going out of the country or just didn’t want to wait in line on election day.
Just on page 3 of this thread we have one person proposing electoral reform because we can’t have majorities anymore, and one proposing electoral reform in a way that would guarantee no more majorities.
Getting back to the question of why we have such dramatic swings and the US doesn’t, I would agree with the comments about districting, but would add something - swings like this are inherent in a parliamentary system where the leader of the executive holds office by virtue of commanding a majority in Parliament.
In the US, if you want to defeat the presidential candidate of Party A, you vote for the candidate for Party B. But you might like your local Congress critter, who’s Party A, so you vote for him. You can split your vote.
In Canada, we don’t vote directly for the Prime Minister. We vote for the local MP. The party that elects the most candidates forms the government, and the leader of that party become PM. So if I don’t want the leader of Party A to become Prime Minister, I don’t vote for the local candidate for Party A. I might vote for the local candidate for Party B, because I think she’s got the best chance of beating the local candidate for Party A, thus denying the leader of Party A one MP. Or I might vote for the local candidate for Party C, because Party C’s platform matches my own views the best.
In the meltdown of 1993, there was a widespread rejection of the Conservative government, so voters who wanted to get rid of the Conservatives had to vote for candidates from other parties. This time, people wanted the Liberals out, so they voted for other parties. It’s not an option in our system to say “I don’t think Paul Martin’s a good PM, and I want him out, but I’ll vote for the local Liberal.” If you want him out, you don’t vote Liberal. If you do vote Liberal, you’re voting directly for the local Liberal, and indirectly for Paul Martin.
But I really think that the question isn’t “why does Canada have such swings and the U.S. doesn’t?” The question is: “why are incumbents so strong in the US?” I’ve seen a couple of studies that say that the US has the lowest turn-over rate in its national legislature of any of the western democracies. So it’s not just that the US and Canada are out of step; on this point, the US is out of step with most western democracies. But that’s another thread.
So, RickJay, who got the prize? did I miss the formal announcement skimming the thread?
The incumbent turnover rate is low in the US because the incumbent’s political party controls the process: they draw up the voting districts, they run the electoral process. You need look no farther than the shenanigans in Florida during the 2000 election to see what I mean.
that is something I find very odd. Seeing as your system is set up with so many checks and balances why wouldn’t you have a neutral third party set up the electoral process to avoid such shenanigans. For all teh problems I have with aspects of our system Elections Canada does a very decent job in keeping everything standardized and above board.
I am putting together a spreadsheet today to determine the winner, as my small brain cannot handle doing it by hand. Winner will be announced by tomorrow morning.
You might call that a historical oversight. Some of us are working on it: http://www.committeeforfairelections.com/ The American system being what it is, it has to be done one state at a time, and partisanship – not only institutional, but popular – can be a real obstacle. Schwarzenegger’s initiative to set up such a system in California just might have been approved by the voters, if a Democrat had proposed it.