Canada Votes 2019

[EricHiggin]

SvennoJ said:

EricHiggin said:

I hate not being able to choose the P.M. separately. My riding would rather vote liberal as they tend to be better for farmers more often than not, but we clearly wanted Trudeau out, so were forced to vote for the next best thing which looked to be conservative. 

I don't think just a pop vote works though. It may work now still, but the rural areas don't grow yet the cities do, and the cities tend to favor liberal, so a pop vote by itself could be a problem eventually as well.

That's democracy though.... This election my vote didn't count at all with the winner takes all system. Which also influences people to vote for one of the big parties instead of one of the smaller ones they feel more aligned with.

It's customary that the PM comes from the biggest party, not much you can do about that. It would be weird to have a PM from a minority party. I originally come from the Netherlands which works with a popular vote system while also voting for the PM sort off. You vote for the candidate in the party you want to see as leader of that faction. The biggest party's faction leader becomes PM.
The disadvantage is that it makes it much easier for a populist party to take ground. Dutch politics are a mess as well.

That's a potential problem with a popular vote as well though. When the urban area's grow enough to become overwhelmingly influential, as long as the liberals don't do anything too stupid, they could remain in power indefinitely, and that's no longer a democracy. Either separate area's need to have enough power to govern themselves for the most part, or checks and balances need to be part of the voting system. One way or another, it's not perfect or completely fair and some people aren't going to be happy about it.

It would be weird, but it would also make the parties change how they choose who's going to lead them. If you want to have your candidate be P.M. they better be the right person for the right reasons. If you look at how Scheer acted in the debate, it's like he figured he had it in the bag already. His reply to May flat out saying he won't be P.M. was terrible. Something along the lines of 'oh ya, we'll see about that'! Like they were kids bickering in the playground. Trudeau was being a prick in that debate but at least seemed somewhat like more of an adult.

The Dutch system seems odd, because if you like the party's platform, but don't like any of the candidates to choose from for their party, then you're in the same boat really. You get a leader you don't like but a platform you do, or you choose a leader you like, but deal with whatever their platform is.

I seriously don't think the conservatives lost due to their platform for the most part. They lost because of Scheer. Beating Trudeau should not have been that tough this election. I really wanted to vote just to keep Trudeau out, but I couldn't because Scheer just sucks as well. If they would've ran someone like O'leary I would've voted for him no question. The platform could even have been somewhat weaker and I would've voted for him. It's part of the reason Ford got elected. While Wynne had screwed up big time, Ford was clearly nothing like her so it made sense to vote for him. Scheer is too much like Trudeau, and if conservatives don't like Trudeau, then why did you run a guy comparable to Trudeau?