Quoting Stephen Black <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
> I'd say about 90%, Jody. Actually, our previous prime minister was
> Jean Poutine, and the current one, just elected, is Paul Merde, who
> is indeed the leader of the Liberal party.
Oh, yeah, these aren't obscure refernces. Really, Stephen, you should be more
polite in "mixed" company. :-)
>
> I'm also happy to enlighten Rick Froman, a typically political
> science-challenged friend from our southern neighbour. Yes, we do
> have a Prime Minister and no, we do not directly elect him or her.
> Instead, we vote for our representative member of Parliament and the
> party which elects the most members ("seats") gets to choose the
> prime minister.
Technically, of coure, this is not true. There is no mention of parties in the
constitution. In fact, the members of parliament elect the Prime Minister. The
whole point of "parties" is to bundle together a bunch of candidates who all
agree to vote for the same person should they be elected to their individual
seats. In places where there are no formal political parties (e.g., Nunavut,
until recently) they just voted for the person who they thought would do the
best job (to a first approximation).
>
> And while I'm on the topic of political differences between Canada
> and the Undecided States, I should point out that voters in the US
> are allowed only to elect electors, who do the real deciding on who
> gets to be president. So Americans actually do not have a democratic
> system. Given that you don't, and that you also possess weapons of
> mass destruction, we're thinking of invading you to bring freedom and
> democracy.
Indeed, it is much worse than that. Because the number of electors is equal to
the number of senators plus the number of representatives, many small,
mostly-rural states are massively over-represented in the electoral college,
having, for instance, 3 votes when, accoring to rep by pop, they would have only 1.
Christopher Green
York University
Toronto, ON
(that's in Canada, eh?)
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