Too many ridings.

[c9]

Canada has 308 ridings. This election campaign is 55 days long, which means that if I wanted to profile each riding I would have to post six per day, with Sundays off. (it IS the Lord's day, after all)

Obviously not gonna happen. But I've realized there are ten ridings left I want to profile, and in precisely ten days the polls will already be closed. So I'm going to have to post more often. Just wanted to warn you.

primary_suspect, iambic_cub, disasternat, cap_hill_latte, skaughty, jamielb, quebec_city_boy, adamos, evad_cgy, and more will have profiles of their very own to go with the ones already posted!

Update: senhor and jdhorner too! Even if they can't vote, they get in on the fun.

Comments

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

OK, new idea. Scrap the whole system, move to a system of "political draftees" -- random selection of all voting-age people for one (and only one) term in office. No elections at all. No ideologues, no professional politicians, no corruption issues (no one's there long enough to get really corrupt), and NO CAMPAIGNING!

There, that's done. Now on to fixing global warming...

[c9.livejournal.com]

Oh my GOD. That's like rewriting your entire code base *every* *year*. No learning from mistakes, history repeats constantly... I may have a nightmare now.

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

The only thing politicians learn from their mistakes is how not to get caught next time.

[c9.livejournal.com]

Let's try an experiment. Next time you're standing in line, imagine the person in front of you was in charge.

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

I'm obviously not advocating replacing everyone, and not all *at the same time*, that would be chaos. You'd still need parties, and party leaders presumably. The term would have to be long enough to learn the ropes, but not long enough to become a fixture (say, five years).

This neatly solves the issue of voter participation, too... if you could be called up for service at any time, wouldn't you be a little more interested in national policy?

Of course I'm not seriously advocating this model in its extreme form -- I'm not an anarchist... but it does provide some interesting ideas for new and different models of democracy.

I have other ideas too! Like environmental courts. I'd also like to give the UN some teeth, but that's more long-term. :-)

When you're PM, can I get a Senate seat? Please? I promise not to say things like this in public.

[c9.livejournal.com]

Sure, why not.

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

Hm, you gave in too easily. You're planning to aboolish the Senate, aren't you? :)

[c9.livejournal.com]

No, I like the idea of a house of sober second thought. but I'm not sure what I want to do to it to improve it (other than "something")

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

I have some ideas... but mostly they're making it more like the American version. Only less corrupt, some how. I'm still working on that part.

[c9.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's a lot to be said for a triple-E senate. But I want some way to detach it from the existing elections and parties sometimes.