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Summary: The Canadian Electoral System

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Electoral systems are very influential in political systems, as it is directly related to the decision-making process and the democratic institution of any given country. This is true in the case of Canada as well, as the current electoral system in Canada have profound direct influence in the voting incentives and therefore voting behavior of its citizens. However, many important political scientists and academics pointed out that the influence is not a positive one, when commenting on Canada’s current First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) or Single Member Plurality systems. For example, Jeffrey Simpson (2001), a well-known academic and journalists, when addressing the electoral system in Canada, referred to Canada as a “friendly dictatorship” in his …show more content…

Jackson (1987) also observed the connection between the current Canadian electoral system, and the declining voter turnout in elections faced by Canada over the last 4 …show more content…

In the case of constituencies, many in the political sciences notices that in constituencies with small and loyal electorates to one particular party, they can be simply marked off as “safe” by the party (Leduc, 2009, p. 22), effectively disfranchising those who casts dissenting votes as the riding electorate population already favors that particular party, likely leading those dissenting voters to simply abstain. Conversely, when a riding is deemed “hopeless”, due to already favoring another party in its demographics, a party may abstain from effective campaigning and mobilization of its voters, and respectively its voters would also not see the value of voting (Gallego, Rico & Anduiza, 2011, p. 160). It can be suggested that both these occur during elections, because of Canada’s stubborn adherence to this electoral system. Minorities are not safe from these disproportionalities as well, as Gwendolyn Moncrieff-Gould (2015) observes that due to the heavy concentration of immigrant minority groups in urban centers (85%) where riding populations are high, and the existence of lowly-populated rural constituencies that are dominated by whites, by simple mathematics minorities suffer a lower value of their vote per capita compared to their white

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The conflict of on party receiving more representation turnout for racial gerrymandering has introduce opposing views to this system. Due to a common focus on racial diversity and representation there has been an increase in programs to solve this issue. Racial gerrymandering tries to repair certain issues although it promotes a single party with unequal representation.

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On top of that, the party that wins can actually have less of the popular vote than the party that lost (obviously coming second in this example). 1997 was considered a very blatant year when it came to issues with FPTP, as an example, the Reform Party of Canada and the Progressive Conservatives had less than one percentage point separating their vote (19.4 percent to 18.8 percent), but the Reform party elected 40 more MPS than the Progressive Conservatives.1 This example shows a clear unfairness in how the voting system works in FPTP, as the voters who voted for the Progressive Conservatives were not being represented fairly. This is where FPTP's major flaw comes into play, it punishes smaller parties that may have wide support across the country, but no centralized support bases anywhere. Parties such as the Green party stand no chance in most areas of the country and hardly get any seats, with 3.4% of the votes in the 2015 federal election, it would be assumed that they would have close to that many seats , however, they had one single seat which converts to 0.3% of the seats.2 Of course, it is important to take into consideration that with the FPTP system voters may be inspired to vote more strategically to not “throw away their

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As one of the most hotly debated areas of the US government, the Electoral College deserves to be given a more in-depth look. It was originally founded as a way to prevent a lack of informed voters from electing an unqualified president. Now, it still serves its original purpose, but has become far less necessary in an age of easily accessible information. Despite having some positive points, the Electoral College is too overburdened by issues like unfair vote distribution and a high failure rate to be an effective system. The way the Electoral College distributes votes is overtly favorable to less populated states.

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This means that if the legislature can abolish of change the nature of the Senate in such a way that there is an imbalance in the check and balances of the Canadian political system then this power is weak and without effect. Thus, this paper will examine the response of the Supreme Court to these questions, in order to determine how it interprets the power of the legislature and the role of the Senate within Canadian politics. It will do this by examining the primary text alone and any case law examined by the Supreme Court in this

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For a long time the debates had been going about how was the better prime minister of Canada. On the the top of most lists of best prime ministers are Mackenzie King and Sir John A. Macdonald. For example, according to the Expert Survey that was made in 2013 “Laurier came first, Macdonald second, and King third, but the difference in their overall scores was negligible”. Both prime ministers had a strong vision of the country that helped shaped Canada to become the country it is today(in 2015). Thesis: Sir John A.Macdonald was one of the founding fathers, but William Lyon Mackenzie King had to lead the country through the part of Depression and WWII, and they both have made different positive contributions to Canada and are highly respected

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M.A. Roberts and M.H. Abrams are two people who separately translate the epic Beowulf from the Old English, performed version. Abrams reworded more of the text to add more action and drama to the text, while Roberts reworded very little, making Abrams’s version better. Roberts’s version describes Beowulf as “the earl’s defender” (Roberts 5), which is not very impactful because he only protects the earl’s men. Abrams describes Beowulf as “the protector of warriors” (Abrams 6), suggesting that he is so powerful that he protects other warriors. Imagery is made where mighty warriors need help, and Beowulf is their savior.

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Western alienation is described as “a feeling of resentment by some inhabitants of western Canada against perceived favouritism by the national government towards the western provinces” (Collins, 2015). This alienation from the government can also be seen and demonstrated in the Senate, leading the growing western provinces to be underrepresented. The current system of allocating seats has not been significantly changed since confederation (Boyer, 2014).This has caused the alienation of provinces and discourse throughout regions due to the lack of considerable representation and recognition of distinct attributes and needs of provinces who are grouped together when they should be considered a region on it’s own (Boyer, 2014, 221-223). The

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The act of gerrymandering does threaten democracy because it aids a specific political party,it is unfair to the voters, and it allows politicians to have control over the voters. Within the gerrymandering game, the political party that was supported was commonly content and fully supported the plan while the opposition was almost always completely against the decision making it difficult to compromise. The point of a democracy is to represent everyone who has the power to vote. The two main parties in the United States are Republican and Democratic and yield the highest chance of having an official be elected for state governments, or local district governments compared to third parties. When one party gerrymanders, they weaken the other party 's chances of gaining power.

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It is clear that American voters tend to avoid local elections and off-year elections. Run-off elections are also likely to register lower voter turnout as compared to first-round elections. The larger the gap between first round elections and run-off elections, the higher the decline in voter turnout. Moreover, there are lower percentages of young people voting as compared to the older population. This is an important point to note since it highlights that young people do not have information guiding them on the importance of voting.

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"Candidate with the highest number of the vote wins the right to represent the particular seat in the House of Commons", according to CBC news. There are some limitations regarding this method. First of all, it could possibly happen that candidate with less than half vote wins, which means it only reaches minority people's desired outcome. In addition to the tactical voting, the two-party system could be a serious problem. Since only the first matters, candidates with the low possibility to win may exist the election.

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