Kevin Johnson and Alexander Vanderklipp have published this paper on how Canada is able to run its election administration (including drawing districts) in a non-partisan and efficient manner. All Canadian political parties acknowledge the competence and fairness of Canadian election administration.
Johnson and Vanderklipp are part of Election Reformers Network. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for the link.
CANADA/PROVINCES —
ALL ANTI-DEMOCRACY MINORITY RULE GERRYMANDER REGIMES
WITH FATAL PARL SYSTEMS –
TOP HACKS HAVING TYRANT LEGIS+ EXEC POWERS — SINCE 1760S – BRIT TAKEOVER OF CANADA FROM OLDE FRENCH.
My rebuttal literally starts with their name in their link – “Nonpartisanship Works”. Everything in our society has become partisan, so how can you be effective and nonpartisan without drawing charges from anyone of being partisan? School board elections are the most nonpartisan thing ever. Guess what, they’ve become politically charged. The news is partisan. Sports are partisan.
Canada as well has the most egregious allowance of unbalanced electoral districts allowing for overrepresentation of rural areas that in this country the Democrats would call racist because blacks outside the South only live in urban areas, so you could take the Canadian system, place it in this country, and it would instantly be taken to court for being unconstitutional.
They’re about to do redistricting and for the first time in decades a province Quebec is going to lose a seat (they don’t remove seats from provinces whose share of the population goes down, they add to the ones going up, this leads to ridiculous things like Prince Edward Island having 4 members of Parliament). Quebec is politically important to every party’s electoral calculus for hoping to win a plurality, throw in the Bloc issue, and the expectation is when the bill passes Parliament, Quebec will not lose their seat. That would never be allowed to fly in this country following a census. (The census by the way is now partisan.)
One of my favorite political journalists is Paul Wells of MacLean’s, so I read up on Canadian politics a good bit. Let me share a quote from him I love: “”You can work on exciting new problems just as soon as you show any interest at all in the problems that are boring, decades old, hard to fix, and unrewarding electorally.” Wells with the statement was following the scandal of their Governor General (likewise, a nonpartisan position that somehow the Trudeau government bungled), but could just as easily be applied to the Democratic and Republican parties. Why are you expective good governance reforms from two parties whose only concern is power and winning at the ballot box when said good governance reforms won’t reward them at the ballot box? It’s why I’m a gung-ho Article V Convention believer in a nutshell – if you want the government to work better, Congress is not going to take action.
What works in Canada may not work in the US for a variety of reasons.