On 2/6/08, William Robb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Subject: Re: American Experience - PBS > > > > In a message dated 2/5/2008 10:41:06 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > I think this is what has me confused. > > When we elect what passes for a government, Parliament is dissolved, the > > campaigning runs for about a month, then we pick the least offensive > > option. > > I don't understand what the primarys are supposed to accomplish. > > > > William Robb > > > > =========== > > Yes, you do. > > I don't, really. I find politics to be universally distasteful, and this has > kept me ignorant. > The Canadian system is relatively easy. We elect people to represent us in > Ottawa, they go to Ottawa and toe the party line, which generally is not > representative of what their constituents want, and always at the expense of > the populace. > A few years later, they pretend that we have forgotten that they have been > lying like sidewalks to us, we pretend to forget that we think they are a > bunch of lying filth, and we start the process all over again. > > Your system seems incredibly Byzantine by comparison. > > Let's use the democrats as an example, since I actually know a couple of > their names. > In the present campaign then, the primaries would be determining if Obama or > Clinton would be the candidate in the real election, which isn't really an > election since some other electing body (the Electoral College?) actually > elects the president based on lord only knows what criteria? > > I think my eyes are bleeding. > > Gads, I suppose I should just google this. > > William Robb >
The election determines who the Electoral College for each state should vote for (although in some states, they have the option of going off the reservation and voting for someone else). The system is weighted by how many representatives each state has (minimum of 3, 2 senators and a congressman) so the small states aren't outweighed by the big ones (Same idea as Quebec having a guaranteed 25% of the seats in Parliament, except in favour of the littl guys, not a linguistic minority). The main difference between the Canadian system and the US is ours is a matter of tradition without a lot of written rules and the US system has a complex set of written rules. Ours works, mostly. So does the US system. Ours is far less entertaining and lacks the gridlock option which is the best feature of the US system (Government that can't do anything for a minimum of 2 years because of splist between the houses and/or the executive) M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
