How to Fix Politics (kind of)

It’s that day of the year when people who saw a movie a couple years ago with a character voiced by Agent Elrond start reciting a poem that they don’t understand and idealize a guy who wanted to kill the king of England (and Scotland) and institute a Catholic monarchy in Great Britain (speaking of people not understanding phrases used in comics, “who watches the watchmen?” is a translation from a latin source that is really supposed to mean something like “who protects the guards?” not “who polices the guards?” but I think the comic authors are the ones misusing the phrase not the readers).

It’s also a time of year where people are talking about elections.  Municipal elections were recently held in Toronto and having just moved here I seem to every day read a new article about people who still can’t understand how Ford could win the mayoral election.  Similarly it’s been less than a week since the US had an election, and for years now Canada seems to be on the brink of a new federal election just as soon as Harper thinks he can win a Majority by breaking his own election law that prevents the Prime Minister from being allowed to ask for an election for the sole reason of a power grab.  The idea of the opposition being able to force an election is long past since Mr. Harper was able to convince the former Governor General that since parliament was not functional and that the government was not able to pass any legislation (whereas the opposition could) it didn’t mean that the government didn’t have the confidence of parliament (and thus there should be an election, or an offer for the opposition to form a coalition) it was time to just put a hold on the sitting of parliament (so that the opposition couldn’t pass their legislation and he could go and (somehow) convince Canadians that it was undemocratic for a majority of parliament to oppose a government that fewer than 20% of Canadians (taking into account voter turnout) voted for.  I only hope that the current Governor General acts differently, although knowing that the position is appointed at the suggestion of the Prime Minister, I’m fairly certain Mr. Johnston was asked in his “job interview” what he would do if it came up, and I’m even more certain Mr. Harper wouldn’t offer the job to anyone who gave any hint of not doing his bidding.

All that said, I’m not here to complain about politics.  I’m here to fix politics, as the solutions all seem so simple (except for one).  To fix problems, we first need to know what they are (even if that isn’t normally what you do in politics).  My solutions cover voter ignorance, apathy (specifically youth) and vote splitting.

I’m going to start with what I think is the easy one, and that is apathy of the youth.  Combined with my other solutions which will help people believe that the system isn’t broken and that they can affect things I suggest one simple thing.  Unless they’ve changed the curriculum since I was in highschool in grade 10 you are required to take a 1/2 course on civics.  This civics course at least for me focused mostly on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that is in the constitution.  One of these rights being repeated over and over to you by the teacher, and that you’re forced to regurgitate on tests is that EVERY Canadian citizen has the right to vote.  Anybody who hasn’t skipped a grade or failed a grade (and started at the normal age) will be somewhere between ages 14 and 16 when they take this class depending on when in the year they take it, and when in the year their birthday is.  Remember, the constitution says every single Canadian has the right to vote, it doesn’t say every Canadian over the age of 18, it says, every Canadian, and you’re telling this to a bunch of 14-16 year-olds.  Do you know what this taught 15 year old me?  The system is inherently broken.  The most basic law of the land, the one that governs all other laws is misleading you, and that doesn’t give me any faith.  I just realized this is a lot of text just for me to say “lower the voting age so people who are learning about how government works don’t feel disenfranchised.”  Even though that doesn’t actually solve the apparent logical fallacy, most people are so self centered that it won’t even occur to them that it’s still lying because it’s not lying about them.  You may respond to this by saying “but I know what people that age are like, they’re stupid, and care more about their hair, and whether so-and-so is going out with whosit or not, I don’t want to give them the power to affect tax rates or foreign policy no matter how little affect they actually get” and don’t worry I’m far ahead of you.

Voter ignorance is I think perhaps the biggest problem facing every level of politics today, and in every region I can think of.  Politicians are able to convince people to vote against their best interests, because people can’t be bothered to care about what’s actually happening.  The answer is simple, even if the implementation is hard.  Let’s test them.  I say, to be allowed to vote, you should first have to pass a “voters test.”  You may say that that’s an easy thing to corrupt, and the person making said test could rig it so that it only passed people they liked and I agree that that’s a problem.  However, if we only had it test facts, and we made it multiple choice (so that unreadable writing and misspellings or alternate correct answers can’t be rejected)  I’m talking questions like “for what position is the person you’re voting for running?” if someone picks “mayor” when the answer is “member of (federal) parliament” then their vote is discounted, because honestly, I don’t think any reasonable person could have a problem with that.  No trick questions, no hard ones, just facts that anyone with any understanding of the system has, something that you have to be purposefully ignorant to get wrong.  An even better testing system would be to make ballots be multiple choice tests, asking questions about the issues, and depending on how you answer the questions, your vote is cast for a specific candidate (the candidates of course would need to be involved in the creation of this test, this of course is not practical in any way, but would be great if it could be done).  Any language could be made available on request in this age of the internet.

As for my vote splitting, the solution here is simple, in fact it’s so simple I think all the major parties in Canada use it at their leadership conventions.  Vote, if there’s someone with >50% they win, otherwise, eliminate the person with fewest votes, and then loop until someone wins.  Now, you may say that that’s too many elections and one is expensive enough, well then in that case just rank the candidates all at once.  If your first choice is eliminated then go to the second choice on the ballot (unless they’re already eliminated, then move onto third, etc.)  How many people in Canada vote Liberal not because they want to, but because they don’t want the Conservatives to win?  This way, they can vote for their first choice first, but then if that smaller party doesn’t win then at least your voice is heard for the other party you’d prefer.  It’s too bad this system is too complicated for so many people, as when I was voting in the municipal election, the person in front of me at the polling station was having a hard time understanding how the ballot worked when it was something like this:

█   █ John Jackson

█   █ Jack Johnson

and you had to draw a line connecting the blocks between the name of the person you wanted like this:

█—█ John Jackson

you were also explicitly told not to put an x like:

█ x █ Jack Johnson

There were even diagrams showing what a proper ballot looked like.  If you can’t understand that then how are you supposed to be able to understand how to rank your choices?  Then again, maybe you’d be weeded out by my voter competency test so it doesn’t even matter

So there you have it, 3 kinda simple changes to make, that would greatly benefit our political process, at least if we want to keep a representative “democracy” like we currently have.  Anyway, I think there’s a chance this could be my longest post yet, I have a few more coming very soon, so check back in a week or so, one kinda has a relevance time limit of next Thursday so I promise it by then.