Canadian Federal Election 2019.

[Straha]

Sorry, that's undemocratic. I should have a choice to not decide, because that is still a choice. (Apologies to Rush for mangling their song)

You don't have to vote for anyone. You just have to show up. A spoiled ballot is still a ballot.

And a pointless waste of time and resources for the sake of going through the motions of "everybody voting" when the result is functionally the same as if they stayed home.

The evidence that this helps to mitigate the influence of special interests, forces politicians to listen to low-income groups, and makes racial race based voter suppression (though, not gerrymandering) effectively impossible is very strong, especially from Latin America. The notion that results would be 'functionally' the same is a leap that just isn't born out in experience.

All of these attempts to "fix" democracy by further limiting the choice of the voter in some way, whether its by mandatory voting, or barring "stupid" or "uneducated" people from voting, or setting age limits (other than "legally an adult") on who can run, or whatever... it all comes back to the same thing for me. Either you trust the people to govern themselves, or you don't. Either you believe in government by the people, or you don't. And for every situation you can point to where the voters got it wrong, I can probably point to two where limiting the freedom and power of the voters made things worse.

The notion that mandating voting somehow equates to not trusting the people (when, indeed, the entire point is to listen to ALL of the people) is absurd.

My preferred voting system would be for the head of government/head of state to be directly elected by a nation-wide popular vote, with automatic voter registration, votes cast by paper ballot (either in-person or by mail), an automatic recount for any race within, oh, two percent, and a run-off between the top two candidates if no one nets a majority. Anyone who's a citizen 16 or up can vote or run for any office, including convicted felons (the one possible exception would be for treason, as I'm not sure it makes sense to let people participate in a system they have declared war on). And citizenship would be much easier to attain for immigrants.

If you're getting rid of the parliamentary system and separating the executive branch into its own things (America style, Baby!). Sure?

If you're maintaining a parliamentary system it doesn't work. In practice we saw this when Israel tried direct election of the Prime Minister for a decade, it was a complete failure.

In concept, this is also pretty easy to understand. There are three basic outcomes of an election under that system:

- The elected Prime Minister is from the same party as the majority of the house. In which case, the difference between the Status Quo and the new system is nil.

- The elected Prime Minister is from a minority party in a legislature where no party can form a majority. In a normal Wesminster system (or a system like Germany, Spain, etc.) a lack of a majority leads to a negotiated outcome in the legislative body that produces a compromise selection for Prime Minister/Chancellor/whoever. The process of the compromise is often enough to guarantee the legitimacy of their legislative program, and sets up natural bounds on what the minority government can and cannot do. Appointing the Prime Minister with an external electoral mandate to uphold via popular vote short circuits that process in ways that actively prevents compromise, and makes forming an executive from the parliament very difficult, and sometimes impossible. The only solution is to separate the executive functions out of the legislative body into a separate executive branch, but then you've undone the core tenets of the Parliamentary system.

Imagine for a moment that Andrew Scheer was the elected Prime Minister of Canada with the parliament that was just elected. In order to form a cabinet he would either need to bring the Liberals on-board to his agenda, and why would they?, or make supply and confidence deals with the NDP and the BQ who would have every right to ask for their pound of flesh. Harper was able to make that work in '06 and '08 because he had the largest parliamentary party and there was no popular mandate for an alternative (see: the '08 Constitutional crisis). But Scheer would have no such authority.

- The elected Prime Minister is from a minority party in a legislature where there is another party that commands the majority of the house. In this case, why should either side budge on their goals? Each has a strong mandate to see their vision of the future of the country fulfilled and has the power to try and enact that vision. This also begs basic procedural questions. Suppose the House passes a vote of no confidence against the Prime Minister, does he have to step down and be replaced, thus 'invalidating' the popular vote in his favor? Alternatively, can the prime minister dismiss the house and call for elections while maintaining his job? In which case isn't his stance basically declaring that the people were wrong in their electoral choices?

If you're interested in this question, Paul Keating has talked about similar proposals in Australia (especially in context of the Republican movement) and his discussion offers a number of extra objections to this. If you poke around it should be easy to find.

That's fucking democracy.

Philosophers and political scientists the world over will be glad to know you've solved this historically thorny issue so succinctly and quickly. Well done.

You don't have to vote for anyone. You just have to show up. A spoiled ballot is still a ballot.

Do you expect me to wait an hour in line to draw a fucking penis on the ballot?

Just gives you time to practice drawing the most anatomically correct penis that you can before you go in the booth.

But, frankly, the 'I lose time from my life' argument is one I give negative shits about. As long as the day is a compensated day off then I see voting as exactly like jury duty, a societal mandate that you should take seriously and cheapening it only does everyone harm. And, yeah, you can approach it from a set of personal values that are skeptical to the project (drawing dicks on the ballot, refusing to vote to convict anyone, etc.) but you still have to take that question and process seriously.

[Bernkastel]

Sorry, that's undemocratic. I should have a choice to not decide, because that is still a choice. (Apologies to Rush for mangling their song)

You don't have to vote for anyone. You just have to show up. A spoiled ballot is still a ballot.

And a pointless waste of time and resources for the sake of going through the motions of "everybody voting" when the result is functionally the same as if they stayed home.

All of these attempts to "fix" democracy by further limiting the choice of the voter in some way, whether its by mandatory voting, or barring "stupid" or "uneducated" people from voting, or setting age limits (other than "legally an adult") on who can run, or whatever... it all comes back to the same thing for me. Either you trust the people to govern themselves, or you don't. Either you believe in government by the people, or you don't. And for every situation you can point to where the voters got it wrong, I can probably point to two where limiting the freedom and power of the voters made things worse.

And yes, I will stand by this despite the fact that the Cons got more votes than the Liberals (although distinctly NOT a majority).

My preferred voting system would be for the head of government/head of state to be directly elected by a nation-wide popular vote, with automatic voter registration, votes cast by paper ballot (either in-person or by mail), an automatic recount for any race within, oh, two percent, and a run-off between the top two candidates if no one nets a majority. Anyone who's a citizen 16 or up can vote or run for any office, including convicted felons (the one possible exception would be for treason, as I'm not sure it makes sense to let people participate in a system they have declared war on). And citizenship would be much easier to attain for immigrants.

That's fucking democracy.

In regards to mandatory voting, I would like to point out that systems where voting is voluntary are opt in systems. A problem for such systems is that people need to have the motivation to opt in and can opt out without actively making a choice to or without thinking much about the choice. For example, a person can just forget to vote. A person can can find themselves busy and decide to put off something that's optional. I could go on. But I'll just mention what I'd like you to consider.

First is that the idea of something being optional, rather than an obligation/duty, can seriously affect the degree to which people take something seriously. Second, that a person has not voted does not mean they made a conscious choice not to vote. All you need to get people not to vote in an opt in voluntary system is have them lack the drive to actually do the act of voting. That can occurred simply because voters don't perceive their votes as mattering enough to worry about not voting or putting other things above voting. I've had the problem of voting requiring a conscious effort myself. There was a local vote where I live last year. I was suffering from a bout of depression at the time, so I was in a state where I didn't bother much with stuff that was not compulsory. Naturally, I ended up not voting. This was not something where I made a choice. I just lacked the drive to bother with anything not obligatory.

To be clear, my own preference is simply for a system where not voting is something that requires a conscious choice not to do it

[Solauren]

The biggest problem is Voter Apathy with the Canadian Political system.
Voter Apathy is also why the popular vote is stupid. All you need is a charismatic con man like Trump to run.

Interesting that your example of why the popular vote is a bad idea is someone who lost the popular vote. Do you have any evidence behind your claim ?

Actually, I'll clarify.

Voter Apathy makes the popular vote stupid, by the fact that all you need is someone that "shakes the apathetic voter up" and no matter what their stance, they vote for them.

More like it exposed stupidity, I admit.

[mr friendly guy]

Straha did raise a good point because I see it like that as well. I think if your country is a democracy I see it as a duty to vote. Its part of the responsibility of a citizen along with paying tax, not breaking laws etc. There was one time I was feeling pretty apathetic, but I still voted because of this sense, and yeah I put in a little bit of research so I could tell the difference between the parties (at this time I had missed a lot of the campaigning which I would normally see because I was overseas at the time, so I had to ask friends and use internet searches to get a sense of the difference between the parties). I suspect if it wasn't mandatory, there will be people who won't vote.

Now if you can't be half arsed to do research because you don't see it as a responsibility, then you can turn up and draw dick pics. However I don't believe in shirking your responsibility. A more conciliatory way is perhaps an abstain option (to rule out the people who are ignorant on whether they can spoil votes), then if lots of people abstain, the onus would be on political parties to find out why and reengage with the electorate.

[LaCroix]

When you have a duty to vote, it is also necessary that you have a legal framework that makes sure you have time to vote. Election day being a national holiday, or paid time off for voting is legislated with no exceptions, voting places are wide spread and numerous, etc. All voters have to be registrated automatically, can not be purged, etc.

In Austria, for example, you get your ballot mailed to you weeks in advance, and everyone gets it the same day. You have to sign for it. If you did not get it, you can immediately get an investigation going where it went and what happened. It also tells you exactly where to vote (you can get a traveller ballot that allows you to vote somewhere else or abroad if you aply for it before the ballots are sent out. That one automatically invalidates your residential ballot, so you only get one. You can also use it to vote early by mail) - so your place will not be overrun with long lines. Voting will occur on a Sunday or a national holiday to reduce problems with work preventing you to go (and you can just easily get a mail ballot instead if you really work in a hospital/paolice/whatever), so never any problem with that), and will be open for all day.

When voting, you show your id, sign in and go voting with the secret ballot. All votes are in paper and will be counted by a gremium on site. And the names/id signed are compared with the list of voters supposed to vote here, (and the travellerg voter registers from other places, later) , in case someone managed to get multiple ballots to vote on more places. Never any problems with voter fraud or miscounts that can't be corrected. If you lose it, you can get a provisional ballot, and your sign off will be on the traveller voter list, which is looked over with extra scrutiny and compared to all others.

We could probably switch to mandatory voting with no delay or change. It's occasionally discussed and dropped.

But unless you already have such an extensive safeguarding and voter enabling system, having mandatory voting with no change to the current law is just voter disenfranchisement with added fees for being disenfranchised.

[Tribble]

How about waiting for my actual response before mocking my (presumed) hypocrisy?

Sorry, been away for awhile.

Nah, I was thinking along some people I know who were in favour of proportional representation... until I pointed out the other day Conservatives actually received less seats then they should. As I expected they made a sudden U-turn which I found pretty funny

Personally I'm more in favour of ranked ballots.