This goes for all politicians but why isn't it a requirement that they live in the riding they're running in? It seems odd to have the person who's going to represent you and your community's concerns be someone who's unfamiliar with the area.
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This goes for all politicians but why isn't it a requirement that they live in the riding they're running in? It seems odd to have the person who's going to represent you and your community's concerns be someone who's unfamiliar with the area.
On the one hand I do think it makes the most sense.
On the other hand residents should hold that as a factor when deciding who to vote for. What if you lived riding adjacent? Like if you lived in Calgary Confederation but worked in Calgary Centre should you only be allowed to run in Confederation?
Plus you get bizarre situations like Brian Mulroney representing Central Nova (aka Antigonish NS and Pictou County).
Generally speaking I don't like the idea of parachute candidates but I think making up residency rules can overcomplicate things.
I know a former politican, who was a provincial party leader, that often takes contracts across the province. If they wanted to run in the next election would they run from their primary residence that they own, the riding where they're renting from during a contract, or the riding they're working in and spending most of their time where they'd be interacting with more people?
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On the one hand I do think it makes the most sense.
On the other hand residents should hold that as a factor when deciding who to vote for. What if you lived riding adjacent? Like if you lived in Calgary Confederation but worked in Calgary Centre should you only be allowed to run in Confederation?
Plus you get bizarre situations like Brian Mulroney representing Central Nova (aka Antigonish NS and Pictou County).
Generally speaking I don't like the idea of parachute candidates but I think making up residency rules can overcomplicate things.
I know a former politican, who was a provincial party leader, that often takes contracts across the province. If they wanted to run in the next election would they run from their primary residence that they own, the riding where they're renting from during a contract, or the riding they're working in and spending most of their time where they'd be interacting with more people?
What if they live in another country? Asking for a potted plant...
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This goes for all politicians but why isn't it a requirement that they live in the riding they're running in? It seems odd to have the person who's going to represent you and your community's concerns be someone who's unfamiliar with the area.
I mean, sometimes that ends up being unfair - eg you have someone who lives in a riding and represents it. Then the boundaries change a bit and now their neighbourhood is in the next riding over. Does it make sense that person should have to sell their house and move to keep representing the riding?
Of course - I do think living in Canada would be a reasonable requirement.
On the one hand I do think it makes the most sense.
On the other hand residents should hold that as a factor when deciding who to vote for. What if you lived riding adjacent? Like if you lived in Calgary Confederation but worked in Calgary Centre should you only be allowed to run in Confederation?
Plus you get bizarre situations like Brian Mulroney representing Central Nova (aka Antigonish NS and Pictou County).
Generally speaking I don't like the idea of parachute candidates but I think making up residency rules can overcomplicate things.
I know a former politican, who was a provincial party leader, that often takes contracts across the province. If they wanted to run in the next election would they run from their primary residence that they own, the riding where they're renting from during a contract, or the riding they're working in and spending most of their time where they'd be interacting with more people?
Maybe they should make it a rule that if you're ever elected in one riding, you can never run in another.
Maybe they should make it a rule that if you're ever elected in one riding, you can never run in another.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wormius
Or at least some residency requirement of more than 2 years.
A cooldown period would likely be enough. If they put a 2-4 year cooldown on a politician from being voted out of riding before being able to parachute into another riding then that would be enough for everyone to calm down and find other ways to move forward.
I would be curious how many times this has come up in our history. I expect that most politicians would take the message and go away, so there wouldn't have been much thought about making a rule to prevent that act.
A cooldown period would likely be enough. If they put a 2-4 year cooldown on a politician from being voted out of riding before being able to parachute into another riding then that would be enough for everyone to calm down and find other ways to move forward.
I would be curious how many times this has come up in our history. I expect that most politicians would take the message and go away, so there wouldn't have been much thought about making a rule to prevent that act.
That's a good question, it seems like when someone "parachutes" in, it's a first time election. Such as Mulroney in Central Nova. Mulroney then ran in Baie-Comeau (whatever that riding was, although I feel like he ran Baie-Comeau his home town but was living in Montreal).
Not sure how often a politican lost then ran in a by-election elsewhere.
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A cooldown period would likely be enough. If they put a 2-4 year cooldown on a politician from being voted out of riding before being able to parachute into another riding then that would be enough for everyone to calm down and find other ways to move forward.
I would be curious how many times this has come up in our history. I expect that most politicians would take the message and go away, so there wouldn't have been much thought about making a rule to prevent that act.
As much as people love to say we vote for a riding representative, modern convention is we are voting for a party to govern. For most voters (not all), the actual name of the person running is a place holder for the Party name beside it.
Carlton wanted PP out, but as a country, a large portion voted for his party and leadership. Parachuting him somewhere doesn't really change anything. Honestly, if anything, we should say XYZ riding voted for the CPC so if they want to substitute the person we shouldn't have to be saddled with a $2Mil by-election.
Now we do have to still live with our historical conventions and the intention of the election, meaning members must be voted in by name not by party, so we will go through the actions of a byelection, incur the costs and preserve our democratic roots. But I don't think trying to limit these actions do anything to protect or harm our democracy, so I don't think it is even something we should focus energy on changing.
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Perhaps if the party wins a riding by more than 2/3rds, they have the option of replacing a candidate without a new election if within 6 months of a previous one. Or the other parties can vote on if the replacement is acceptable to them(and save taxpayer dollars, so incentive to be on the sane side here).
Just thinking you need to avoid a situation where something comes out after the election that makes the populace turn on their vote and thus deserve a say.
The Liberals should parachute a strong candidate into that riding to try and pick up another seat.
That'd just be an embarrassment for the strong candidate. I don't want to shatter any visions you may have about voters evaluating a candidate based on their qualities, and not sign colour, but a Liberal is not going to win that riding, even if they were Jesus. Too much risk of socialism.
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That'd just be an embarrassment for the strong candidate. I don't want to shatter any visions you may have about voters evaluating a candidate based on their qualities, and not sign colour, but a Liberal is not going to win that riding, even if they were Jesus. Too much risk of socialism.
To be fair, if it were Jesus, it would be an even higher risk of socialism.
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As much as people love to say we vote for a riding representative, modern convention is we are voting for a party to govern. For most voters (not all), the actual name of the person running is a place holder for the Party name beside it.
Carlton wanted PP out, but as a country, a large portion voted for his party and leadership. Parachuting him somewhere doesn't really change anything. Honestly, if anything, we should say XYZ riding voted for the CPC so if they want to substitute the person we shouldn't have to be saddled with a $2Mil by-election.
Now we do have to still live with our historical conventions and the intention of the election, meaning members must be voted in by name not by party, so we will go through the actions of a byelection, incur the costs and preserve our democratic roots. But I don't think trying to limit these actions do anything to protect or harm our democracy, so I don't think it is even something we should focus energy on changing.
A large number of people may have voted for the party, but that does not mean that they voted for PP and either way an even larger number people voted against him (both nationally and in his own riding).
Chances are that the party may vote him out of leadership by the end of the year. The caucus has already enacted the Reform power that allow the caucus members to remove the leader, which is how they ousted O'Toole. However, even if PP survives the caucus vote, he will still need to survive a leadership review in the AGM.
He could parachute into this new stronghold riding and be removed as the party leader and leave the taxpayers with a $2M bill for the by-election so he can be a backbencher with Sheer? Pass.
Honestly, this demonstrates another reason to move to a MMPR system where the party leaders could simply be the first PR seat in each party. That way they wouldn't need to focus on a single riding and instead can work to promote the party profile across the nation.
Then you could go ahead with implementing rules about people running in a riding should be in that riding and put in a 2 year cooldown on anyone who loses a seat from running again elsewhere to avoid career politicians who just want to grift off of the taxpayer dollar. (But maybe put an exception process in place for politicians to move, if needed)
Honestly, this demonstrates another reason to move to a MMPR system where the party leaders could simply be the first PR seat in each party. That way they wouldn't need to focus on a single riding and instead can work to promote the party profile across the nation.
This makes a ton of sense. It might wind up with a bunch of people running as the leader of niche parties just to get enough vote (i.e. 1/338th of the vote or whatever is the proportion at the time) to get their "party" a PR seat, but that's probably not a big problem and you could also create a minimum - e.g. the PR seats are distributed amongst parties with more than 5% of the popular vote.
I like it.
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This makes a ton of sense. It might wind up with a bunch of people running as the leader of niche parties just to get enough vote (i.e. 1/338th of the vote or whatever is the proportion at the time) to get their "party" a PR seat, but that's probably not a big problem and you could also create a minimum - e.g. the PR seats are distributed amongst parties with more than 5% of the popular vote.
I like it.
I think other examples of MMPR would have a 5% minimum to be granted one of the PR seats. Having a 5% limit means:
NDP would have gotten PR seat(s) as they made it to 6.3%
Bloc would have gotten PR seat(s) as they made it to 6.3%
Green party would not have gotten a PR seat as they were only at 1.2%
PPC only got 0.7%
Other fringe parties were at a fraction of a percentage
But this election was weird and very much a head to head between the Libs and Cons.
This would have given much more of the PR seats to the NDP (half as many as the Libs and Cons) and the Greens would have had a pretty decent representation as they nearly matched the Bloc on the popular vote. In fact, the Greens would probably win more seats through PR than through ridings just because they collect so many votes throughout the country without winning very many ridings. (It seems broken that the Greens can get over a million votes and only have 3 seats in 2019)
For fringe parties, the PPC collected 294K votes, which is about 1.6% and still nowhere near the 5% threshold. With 18M voters, a party would need 900,000 votes to get to that threshold.
In a PR scenario though you increase the value of a third party vote so more people will do it. Some voters try to avoid vote splitting in contested ridings. So I’d suspect that in a PR system where there isn’t a penalty for voting for fringe candidates you’d see large shifts in the Cons to the PPC.
You can see the far right success in any European country, there is no reason to believe that wouldn’t occur here. There are enough white nationalists to have a white nationalist party.
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