Civicness abounds!

[rabbitwarren]

I voted for a mayor today! I feel incredibly civic, especially since I voted in the basement of a church, with a fabulously eclectic bunch of volunteers and with a little sharpie voting marker.

After coming to political age as a Canadian in one of the redest states in the union and under the Bush years, I am super pleased to have broken through

Comments

[electrichobbit]

You're going to win your argument. In a democracy (A "direct democracy") all laws would be voted on by all people - not really practical for more than a few 100 people. Thus, representational democracy was born, wherein everyone elects someone to speak for their needs. Individual states and provinces are representational democracies. Once you federate those together, though, you end up with a republic.

[queridita]

Yeah, but that's not how it works in Canada.

We have a representative democracy - we vote for a person to represent us in provincial elections, and again in federal elections - they are completely separate electoral systems.
The federal house is made up of individuals who were elected directly by their constituents to represent their interests. The party in power is the one with the largest number of dedicated representatives in the house, and the Prime Minister is the leader of that party, elected by card-carrying party members prior to the federal election (provided he was elected by his small number of geographically-based constituents).

Sorry, Rabbit. I'm with your opponent on this one.

Also, congrats on voting. It worked!
Also, sad to hear about your grandmother. You and your dad ok?

[electrichobbit]

I wrote that early this morning, and I wasn't entirely clear. The key difference is that a republic is a federation of semi-independent states. The laws of one state still apply to citizens of the other states, even though they never voted for the legislators who passed them. For example, when you go to sunny Alberta, the laws of the Albertans still apply to you even if you are a Ontarian (Ontarionian? Ontarianist? Ontarionaut?).

In a democracy, this wouldn't be true. To be completely accurate, one should say that Canada is a republic of representational democracies. But of course, it's a constitutional monarchy with characteristics of a republic of representational democracies. You might as well just elect a pope and finish off your collection.

[rabbitwarren]

and the debate continues at

[pirate_kitchen]

I too voted. There was a time when I avoided mayoral politics in Ottawa like the sideshow freaks at the circus. Harsh perhaps, but in Ottawa the Federal government has a lot of influence on the city. Many people in Ottawa are civil servants or work at private companies that do some work for the government or work in non-profit organization that gets some or all of their funding from the federal government. Even Queens Park has proven it has a bigger stick than Ottawa city council when it forced Nepean, Kanata, Orleans, Vanier, and Ottawa to merge into one city….at our own expense. I have to hand it to the outgoing mayor when he shocked me out of my complacency. It takes an amazing about of business acumen to start a bus strike in the middle of Christmas shopping season and turn the police force into the Ottawa gridlock patrol.