Voting In Western Government

When it comes to certain qualities and attributes of the United States of America and Canada, many people residing elsewhere fail to tell the difference. The accents of people from certain parts of both countries, for instance, are so incredibly indistinguishable that they baffle any and everyone. Besides this one factor, they even share some comparable cultural characteristics, such as driving on the right side of the road and cherishing the same basic human rights to the utmost importance. Likewise, there are several similarities between multiple aspects of the countries’ respective governments, including within their individual established frameworks, political systems, and their divisions of authorities and duties. These could potentially point out a reason as to why Canada and the United States are immensely successful in their particular objectives, and are on their paths to achieving their long-term goals with difficult to accomplish, yet beneficial visions. After all, they are both either on the way to becoming or currently are two of world’s leading superpowers (Financial Post). However, there is not just one particular infallible way to rule a country and push it to further advancement simultaneously. In fact, each country works and functions differently, which is primarily due to individual background and history. Ultimately, although Canada and the United States of America are both nations that share similarities in various parts of their Constitutions, political

Basically, voters select one candidate from their riding, just like in an SMP system, but they also place a vote for which party they would like to form the government. This second vote determines the amount of seats that each party gains proportional to the amount of votes they collected in the countries. The representatives from each party are then made up of the elected representatives from each riding (if that party was able to elect any) and other members selected by the leader1. An STV system, which is what the Citizen’s Assembly recommended to the people of BC, can be found in Ireland, Malta, and in some levels of government in Australia. Voters rank candidates according to their priorities, choosing as many as they wish. For example, a certain voter could select a Conservative as his or her first choice, a Liberal as the second, a New Democrat as third, and then cast no votes for the Green Party. When each a candidate reaches a certain quota of first place votes, they are elected, and the extra first place votes that they did not need are distributed to the other parties according to their overall ranking. If a second candidate is then elected, his or her extra votes are then distributed to the remaining parties, and so on . This system is rather complicated, especially when compared to our current system, but computerized voting systems have generally alleviated any problems.

Now that you are up to date with currents events I will briefly touch on some strong point of the Canadian democratic system. Citizens in Canada indirectly hold power in a free electoral system and are given better representation and more freedoms for their citizens than other systems of government. The freedom of speech, freedom of political expression, and the freedom of the media allow citizens to vote in favour of their own interest. Democracy in Canada is rooted on the grounds of equal rights; this gives people equality before the law, human rights, free and fair elections and so on. In comparison to the Third World, power is in the hands of the “Big Men”, the police and army are the ones who hold control not the people and where corruption is a norm, Canada may look like a utopia. Another strong point in the Canadian political system is everyone no matter race or sex has the right to vote as long as you are a Canadian citizen over the age of eighteen. Until the 60s/70s parties would make up electoral boundaries this was done to increase the number of votes in that location this is called gerrymander, this was unfair because certain parties had an advantage over others. However, now under the Electoral Boundaries Commissions this problem does not occur and no party has the upper hand over another. Interestingly the

Since party politics began in Canada, the style in which leaders are elected is comparable to a horse race. Using the single member plurality (SMP), more commonly referred to as “first past the post,” method of seat allocation in both the House of Commons and each province's Legislative Assembly, whoever gets the most votes is asked to form the government; this only takes into accounts the number of seats a party wins, not the overall popular vote. In a political system not limited to two parties, like the United States, many times over 50% of Canadians do not want the party that won, to win. In this current electoral system, votes are wasted, smaller parties are terribly misrepresented and, in some cases, a party with a lower percent of

14 October 2012 American Politics Midterm Exam Question 3 The Importance of Elections as a Linkage Institution and Voting Linkage institutions can be defined as institutions that connect citizens with the government. Examples of linkage institutions include elections, political parties, interest groups, and the media. Elections specifically are supposed to encourage public participation in the selection of governmental officials. Unfortunately, low voter turnout has proved that elections are an imperfect linkage institution. Elections depend on voters to be successful, and some factors that relate to the likelihood of voting include age, education, and race. Although some people underestimate the power of the vote, voter turnout is

As time goes on, some countries become more relevant in the global sphere while others start to fade away. Canada is a country that only becomes more relevant as time goes on. Since being granted full sovereignty, Canada has had a growing role as a major world player. Much of their international growth has to do with its close ties to the United States and the United Kingdom. However, the country has also undergone huge change and refocusing on a domestic level. With influence from both Europe and the United States, Canada has a very unique system of governing. This paper will focus on a few major areas of Canada. It will look into the history of Canada, the structure of its government, its politics, and many of the major issues it faces today.

Throughout the history of the United States, the right to vote is one of the most important

1. How democratic is Canada’s electoral system? Canada’s electoral system becomes less and less democratic over the years. The Canadian voting system is called, “First past the Post”. This electoral system only runs fair if there is a total of 2 candidates. In that way, the chance of winning is split into two, therefore majority of the voters are taken into consideration.

Strengthening Canadian Democracy The views of Canadians      In the report by Paul Howe and David Northrup titled, “Strengthening Canadian Democracy: the Views of Canadians” Policy Matters 1:5, Canadians attitudes towards government including questions about electoral system reform, representation and the rate of veter turnout.(Howe & Northrup, 2000) After reading, this report it is clear that many Canadians find many issues of their government to be unacceptable. One of the most menacing concerns is in the form that government attains office. The voting process, the form in which Canadians are represented by their Members of Parliament, and the first past the post method of election.

When evaluating either the liberal democracy or constitutional monarchy in Canada it is rudimentary and essential to first recognize that any one given governing structure or system cannot unequivocally be correct or incorrect. Therefore, the present Canadian liberal democratic system functions well; nonetheless, it would further benefit from adopting both the Nordic democratic socialist model and the proportional representation electoral system. The Nordic governing system would benefit the individuals by providing them with parallel wages, universal health care, free or affordable education, public pension plans, welfare, and free trade. Next, if Canada is to adopt the proportional representation electoral system the votes will better represent

How Can Us Americans Get More People to Vote in Elections? American politics is a fairly important thing to the American people, it seems as if it’s not just important to just us but to the people all over the world since most of these countries rely on us. But, Americans are not voting for some reason. On Election Night in 2016, Nearly half of eligible voters in the United States, 231,556,622 people, did not vote in the 2016 presidential election yet many Americans who did not even vote have decided that they are not even happy with our current president, Donald Trump, when they had the ability to change that outcome on November 2016. An issue that at least politicians have noticed is that eligible voters are not voting and they can

Voting equality means that when it is time that a decision on policy be made, each member must have an equal and effective opportunity to vote on a policy, with all votes being considered equal. Along with effective participation, voting equality is essential in constituting a democracy. For voting to be effective and equal, not only do citizens have to have reasonable access to voting locations, but they must also physically turn up and vote, something that does not always happen in practise. For instance, in the 2012 Presidential Election, 123,714,407 eligible citizens voted compared to 131,142,144 votes cast in the 2008 election (McDonald, 2012). That means there was a decrease in voter turnout of 3.4 percentage points from 2008 (61.6%) to 2012 (58.2%) (Andrews et al., 2012), prompting questions as to why 7,427,737 less voters participated. When a mere 58% of your country’s population chooses not to vote in the

The topic I would like to research for this term paper is the election process across cultures. My paper will examine how leaders are elected across cultures, the specific electoral process in that particular culture, the ways the elected leader of a particular culture influences the people, and the perception that people of that culture have about their elected leaders and the electoral process. I want to explore this topic because I have a strong interest in politics and the Presidential election in the United States will occur during the semester which allows me to link a current event and my topic for the term paper.

Some European friend asked me how I am going to vote in the UK-EU referendum. That is a question not only the majority of people in the UK and Europe is asking and contemplating, whether to be in, or to be out of the EU. I told my European friends

Voting systems all around the world serve more functions than to only elect representatives for the people. Elections create a sense of a democratic environment inside a country; they give accountability and legitimacy to the government in power, assuming it is the people’s voice that is being heard. In a world where most countries enjoy democratic governments and freedom and equality are encouraged, Canada’s current voting system is a nothing but disrespectful to these democratic values. Like in many post-colonial countries, the legacy of imperial regimes has made its way to the modern political system in Canada, still attacking central democratic principles . Canada has been using a single-member-plurality (SMP) electoral system, also