Get out the vote. It's mandatory!

Eric Weiner on Slate recently commented on Australia's compulsory voting scheme. (We've already yakked about this a couple of months ago here and here, and there are some other links from Musings & Ephemera and FindLaw.)

One quotation from the Slate piece is useful, considering the US campaigns over the past couple of weeks.

...mandatory voting would probably cause a further dumbing-down of election campaigns, if such a thing is possible. Motivated by a need to attract not only undecided voters but also unwilling voters, candidates would probably resort to an even baser brand of political advertising, since they would now be trying to reach people who are voting only out of a desire to obey the law and avoid a fine...

Still, the biggest problem with mandatory elections in the States may be the fact that each of the 50 individual State Departments are responsible for the presidential election. That may make any such scheme a little tricky to implement.

You Can't Trust Paul Martin

It's hard enough trusting a Liberal. Paul Martin has shown yet again that he can't be trusted.

Currently the structure of the equalization payment calls for Ottawa to clawback resource revenues from provinces that receive equalization money. As such, when Newfoundland, which had wallowed with a weak economy for years, started drilling for oil, Ottawa kept 85% of the new revenues for Newfoundland. Not only does this effectively castrate the incentive to develop Newfoundland's economy, it also keeps Newfoundland with a weak economy.

At the begining of the Federal Election campaign in May, Stephen Haper promised to let Newfoundland keep its oil revenues. Harper wanted to give Newfoundland the abilty to climb out of its culture of defeat (to use Harper's words) or culture of dependence (to use Martin's words).

With weak polling numbers at the midpoint of the campaign, Martin flip-flopped and promised to give Newfoundland its oil revenues.

Yesterday, Martin reneged on that deal leading to Danny Williams (Newfoundland's Premier) walking out of the equalization conference.

Surely Mr. Martin doesn't want to keep taking a poor province's money, making it more dependant than ever on Ottawa, and preventing that province from being able to build itself to economic prosperity.

Give it to the Grape

It was bound to happen. It happens every time the American Film Institute does a 100 Years... list, and whenever Time publishes their Man of the Year. (Oh I'm sorry, did I say "Man"? I meant "Person.")

It's a three-stage process. You'll start with an arbitrary selection from a nominee pool brainstormed by the card-carrying members of somesuch committee - or, God forbid, the ignorant masses. Then you have the magic shortlist, which may or may not be pared down yet another tier to produce a Lettermanian decuple for purely evolutionary reasons (though I'll save the discussion of why humans should technically be using base 11 for another post). And then you have the punditry, and what punditry it is. My word, we couldn't possibly recognize Don Cherry, they say. Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of Jones!

Greatest Canadian? Pah!

So MotherCorp, in association with Canada's least-favourite airline, is doing one of those silly pick-the-most-important-person opiated distractions for the masses. Leaving aside the point that creating a metric for greatness is rather problematic (hint: creating a transform going from R^n to R loses information, particularly when you can't agree on the transformation function to begin with), it's a crying shame that the Hon. J. C. Crosbie, PC etc., the best premier Newfoundland never had, and the best Prime Minister that Canada never had, isn't on the top 100 list.

Canada, have you no shame?

Won't Someone Pick Them Up Off The Floor?

Well, the writs have been dropped, as predicted. About an hour ago, according to CBC, the Premier met with the Lieutenant Governor, at which time she graciously consented to drop the writs.

Now, won't someone pick those writs up off the floor? They'll get dirty if someone steps on them.

Maybe Plato was Wrong After All

If voting systems were candidates in the Canadian Alliance's inaugural leadership race, Proportional Representation would be Stockwell Day - the flashy, charming, all things to all people solution to everybody's ills. You can just imagine it riding in on a jet ski and in a wetsuit. Sure, there are a few Negative Nancies deriding the idea, saying that it believes that the Earth is less than ten thousand years old and that the Jewish leaders were the children of their father, the devil, but every good idea has its detractors. . . and man, look at those pecs!

Just as I couldn't convince friends in the Canadian Alliance back in those days that, believe it or not, I had their best interests at heart when I told them to vote for Preston, I assumed that members of B.C.'s Citizens Assembly would ignore my warnings that PR would spell the end of representative democracy. To the great credit of the body's 159 randomly-selected British Columbians, I was wrong. To their even greater credit, they've instead recommended preferential balloting and a move to multi-member constituencies, two other moves that I've long-supported (though the fact that constituencies will be represented by different numbers of people is troublesome).

This, along with the election of Stephen Mandel in Edmonton, almost makes me wonder if citizens might be qualified to govern after all.

Can You Feel The Cash Tonight

This is by no means news, but I'm getting slightly fed up about the overt corporate endorsements in the US Presidential campaign. There are numerous examples, from Costco supporting Kerry while Wal-Mart supporting Bush, to the whole Sinclair Broadcasting Group saga. (Matt Yglesias has a comment about this, too.)

Whether the CEO's support Kerry or Bush isn't really my concern. I just think that it's a pretty dumb idea to use a company's resources for political gains.

No Rest For The Wicked (Or The Voters)

Well, my inside sources in the Alberta political scene tell me that the writ to call a provincial election will be dropped today, with the proclamations officially setting the date getting issued on Monday. With a mandated twenty-eight day campaign, that puts election day as Monday, 22 November. It's a virtual certainty that we'll be going to the polls in November, given the bad weather from December through Februaryish, and that holding it much later starts to cut into Her Majesty's comfort level for remaining non-partisan (she won't visit shortly before or after an election, and she's scheduled to drop by for centennial celebrations over the summer).

For the past few months, the speculation's been mainly about whether the election will be on the 22nd (the day after the Grey Cup game), or on the 29th (starting to push bad weather). The main reason for going on the 29th was concern that the Esks might make it into the Cup and win, leaving voters province-wide with massive hangovers. Apparently, the government's decided that this scenario's unlikely.

Not only do we get to elect MLAs, but we also get to vote for Senate nominees: there are four spots up for grabs, but unfortunately, you need to be eligible for the Senate in order to run — ruling me out! The Senate writ (PDF) was dropped back in late September, with the date for election fixed as that of the next general election.

Things are going to get interesting around here, and with three elections in five months (federal in June, municipal this week, and provincial next month), will voters be fatigued? Only time will tell....

Municipal Cabinets

Edmonton's new mayor, Stephen Mandel, elected by as close to a landslide as you can get with three major candidates all of whom were tied in the last opinion poll, is now mooting the notion of introducing a municipal cabinet (via The Journal):

Details of the scheme still have to be worked out, but it would have some similarities to federal and provincial cabinets, with each council member handed a specific area to focus on -- such as transit, social issues or recreation -- in addition to their regular council duties.

However, since Edmonton's civic government is non-partisan, councillors would not wield special powers over their chosen areas like federal and provincial ministers do.

Instead, councillors would be asked to conduct research on issues within their portfolio, keep up to speed on new developments and act as the point person during meetings, news conferences and public discussions.

"I think councillors need to drive agendas. The mayor can only do so much," Mandel said. "Cabinet is not really the right word. It's more about taking charge of a particular issue and moving ahead with it."

It strikes me that this is a remarkably good idea, and one whose time is overdue. Having subject-matter experts on Council who can evaluate administration proposals and push initiatives is an important way to ensure that control over the city's operations and direction isn't entirely taken by administration.

But what, I wonder, does Jim Lightbody think?

Voter List

At the start of my City Politics class on Monday, Professor Lightbody walked in and noted that he'd voted for the first time in today's election early this morning.

Of course, none of us believed him. As Dr. Lightbody has explained to us many times, the rewards of doing anything in city politics are so small that only the mentally deranged do anything beyond voting. Professor Lightbody would tell you that indifference ensures that no one stuffs the ballot box. It isn't worth the effort.

Of course, those of us who aren't that cynical yet share Uncharted's concern that we need some way to ensure we have legal residents voting and to ensure that voters vote only once. But the Universal Voter List as used in BC is a poor solution. Political parties should not be entrusted to maintain voter lists. They have a preference for certain voters to be on the list and they don't operate in municipal elections so they probably won't send in names until just before a Provincial of Federal election. Most importantly, parties have been shown to be completely incapable of maintaining their own voter lists and they have it easy: all they need to do is check who's bought a party membership in the last year. Nonetheless, showing the complete incompetence of political parties, regularly the deceased, the non-existant, and house pets end up on their lists.

I would instead propose we do what the Federal and Provincial Governments do. The list should be populated with those who've paid taxes, have car and other licenses, etc. Any remaining people can show ID to get on. And those without ID can go through a big of paperwork and sign a declaration (the paperwork should deter people from using fake names). Of course, the declaration is not watertight, but neither is using ID#emdash;if you really want to stuff the ballot box, you can make fake ID cards. At some level an election can be abused.

And since the Federal and Provincial governments work on one list, I'm sure we could even just tag onto their list.

Sadly, common sense isn't very common. Especially amongst politicians.

Right back at you, Kettle!

Jon Stewart goes head to head with Tucker Carlson on Crossfire.

The hell of it is that both of them are right and wrong - right when they attack each other, wrong when they defend themselves. Sort of like Presidential candidates.

Universal Voter Lists

Was anyone else horribly disturbed by the fact that nobody really cared who you were when you went to vote on Monday? (And yes, I'm assuming that everyone voted). Being the good little citizen that I am, I brought not only the Voter Information Card that I received in the mail, but also my I.D. and a proof of address. Of course, none of it was needed...

I am appalled that the only proof we have that voting was conducted properly (as in, one vote per person in the area in which they live) are a bunch of sheets that say whatever the prospective voter wanted them to say at the time. There was nothing stopping me from making up 50 fake names and addresses, and poll-hopping all day casting votes for whomever I wanted.

I asked at the poll, and of course got the answer...but "it's a declaration"...a "legal document". Yes, that's right, because I'd be terrified that somebody might try to track down the fake person whose name I just made up on that oath I just signed. Gee...what would happen if they caught the person with the fake name that they have no way to track. Uhh...

Digging around a little further, the line is that it is prohibitive to compile a voters list due to cost and logistical reasons. So, why do many other Canadian cities continue this practice? A brief romp on the 'Net found that Ottawa, Winnipeg and many other similar sized cities still compile voters lists...and since Edmonton has more money and resources (probably than all of them combined) that argument doesn't fly.

Bush Worshipping

At a Cheney campaign stop, a member of the audience speaking about the War on Terror mentioned that, Next to Jesus Christ, [Bush] probably took the greatest load on his shoulder of any individual.

Ethnicity in Biology and Society

This week's New York Times Magazine has a facinating article about race, current work by geneticists to better understand the biology and medicine of race, and how this affects social impressions and treatment of race.

Zeig Hail!

Take a look at Paul Martin in this picture. I thought he was a dictatorial Prime Minister, but I didn't see this coming.