Don, thanks for the overview of the convoluted process
by which Canadian elect their Prime Minister. I'm not
entirely sure it is better than direct election of a head of
state but it is interesting.
-Mike Palij
New York University
m...@nyu.edu
---------- Original Message -------------
On Thu, 17 Nov 2016 07:48:39 -0800, Don Allen wrote:
Hi Mike-
You asked, " Don't you folks in Canada elect your Prime Minister through
a
popular vote?"
No we don't. Most Canadians don't get to vote directly for the Prime
Minister
because thy don't live in his riding. A riding is an electoral district.
Candidates compete against one another within ridings and the person
with the
most votes (often a plurality not a majority as there are usually at
least
three major parties represented) becomes the member of Parliament for
that
riding. The party with the greatest number of seats in Parliament puts
forward
their leader (assuming he or she has won their riding) as Prime
Minister. The
advantage of this system is that you can't have the situation that you
have
just endured where a Democrat President was constantly fighting a
hostile
Republican Congress. In our system the government actually gets to
govern! That
said, there will occasionally be a "minority government". Since we have
three
major parties it sometimes happens that one party takes power with less
than a
majority of seats. These are often good things because they prevent one
party
from running roughshod over the others and usually result in good
compromise
legislation.
Hope that helps.
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