Canada Could Do Worse Than An Electoral College
If you’re a fan of pyrotechnics you might try telling a Woke Warrior about the wisdom of the Electoral College. The resulting head explosion will top anything you’ll see on July 1 or 4.
To Orange Man Bad subscribers, the EC robbed Hillary Clinton of her rightful sinecure in the White House. It allegedly negated the millions of Californians whose Clinton votes could only reap 56 of the 538 EC votes needed to claim the presidency. And it’s a manifestation of the white patriarchy, mansplaining, gerrymandering and probably climate change too.
For those scoring at home, the EC assigns votes equal to the combined total of the state's membership in the Senate and House of Representatives. So California has 56 votes while the seven smallest states get just three. Using this formula, Donald Trump was still able to lose two of the three largest states (California and New York) but still bring home the electoral bacon.
The genius of the EC is that it is a brake against the largest parts of the nation dominating the country. In 1787 they feared Massachusetts, New York and Virginia big-footing their 10 partners. Today, as Hillary learned, being popular at donor parties in Hollywood and the Hamptons isn’t enough to claim the prize. Nebraska gets a say, too.
Like similar rants about the unfairness of the Supreme Court, these complaints have only become issues when the Left loses elections. When it worked for them, they’ve been copasetic about the EC and SCOTUS. (The same arguments are being made now about the impeachment process, where precedent is seen as a barrier to getting what they want.)
So, like anything else that denies the progressive Left its entitlements, the EC needs to be changed today. No… yesterday. How could a bunch of guys wearing wigs and wooden teeth in the 1787 understand the perfection that is #metoo #blm #climatechange #aoc etc.? These turbulent times of Trump demand the Constitution be gutted and precedent be abandoned to achieve a more perfect union.
The only thing standing in the way of these firebrands is SCOTUS and some tricky math about how many states you need to amend the Constitution. But they’re working on that.
For those curious how a system without an EC might look, this weeks’s Canadian leaders’ debate functions as an example. Canada doesn’t go with the straight So You Think You Can Dance popular vote either. It elects its prime minister in a parliamentary system with the PM being the one whose party wins the most seats in Parliament.
It is possible to have the most seats without winning the most votes. Rarely in a five- or six-party horse race does one party get anything approaching 50 percent of the vote. It’s likely the winner on October 21 will not get even 40 percent of the votes. For most of the 152 years in Canada’s history, people accepted this hiccup of their democracy.
What Canada’s system does not have, however, is a brake on the power of its largest constituencies. In its early days, Ontario and Quebec’s needs dominated those of the four smaller provinces. In today’s Trudeaupia, the needs of Ontario and Quebec still dominate those of the smaller provinces, which now number seven— along with the three northern territories.
Trudeau— like his papa Pierre Le Parfait— knows that in 2019, like 1867, he can effectively stymie a large portion of the nation if he controls Québec and gets enough urban votes in Toronto and the Lower Mainland. Those swaths of the West, the North and Maritimes? Meh. Canada’s population guarantees more seats in Parliament in the East and a veto on the pesky pipelines crossing into Ontario and Quebec’s verdant plains.
In Monday’s debate, Trudeau the Eager Thespian steered away from anything that might upset that consensus. Asked about how he could be found guilty of ethics violations, thwarting the RCMP, playing Mr. Minstrel Dressup — and still expect to be PM— he answered, I’m here to protect jobs. Translation, Québecois love me standing up for the bribing bosses at SNC Lavalin. Blackface is so last Tuesday.
Judging by polls since the French and English debates began, this seems to be enough to keep Quebec— and significant segments of urban Toronto— squarely in Trudeau’s corner. With much of the media coverage being guided by a handful of compliant Laurentian toffs in downtown Toronto, he’s been able to keep his hypocritical posturing from ruining his campaign.
With no conservative media counterweight such as FOX or Breitbart represented in the five (count ‘em) questioners, issues such as Elizabeth May’s claim to close down Alberta’s economy by 2030 passed as if she’s said she liked Shawn Mendes. To appease this closure on thought, Andrew Scheer, the putative conservative, adopted a pale echo of Liberal positions on climate, immigration, race, abortion and market monopolies. Maxime Bernier, who espouses true conservative positions on al of these, is relegated to the fringes as if afflicted with scrofula.
As Rex Murphy observed in The National Post: “ (I)t was just one debate, held in Ottawa, constructed within the purely Ottawa journalistic mindset of what is and is not an issue, and chewed over on television and the internet very largely from within that mindset.”
So condescend to the Americans electoral college if you will. But their Founders knew the addictive qualities of power. And the gullibility of the elites in believing their own manifest right to power. They put up strong barriers to separate the two.
Canadians, meanwhile, remain as marginalized as they were in 1867, captives of a class that believes in its own superiority. As George Orwell opined, “"There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.”
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the publisher of http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com . He’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also a best-selling author whose new book Cap In Hand: How Salary Caps Are Killing Pro Sports And Why The Free Market Could Save Them is now available on brucedowbigginbooks.ca..