As a political junkie, I find elections fascinating. Unfortunately, we tend to have them only once every four years or so here (depending on the state of the bromance of Justin and Jagmeet), so if you want your fix of politics and elections, we must look to the Formerly-Good Ol’ U.S. of A.
And we should be watching. Canada now more than ever mirrors the U.S., we’re just a little later and a lot less fanatical. You might even say we’re America Lite. If you’ve been paying attention, you will know that the United States is anything but united right now. It’s an overstatement to say that American democracy is at a tipping point, but not by much.
Americans, for good or otherwise, are election mad. According to one study, there are more than 519,000 elected officials in the U.S., from the president and right on down to judges, school boards, something called ‘water boards’ (no, not waterboarding) and the even more peculiar ‘mosquito control boards’. Until recently, there was even a town in Vermont that elected its dog catcher. (When the town found out it wasn’t even legal for them to elect a dog catcher, they just appointed the same guy.) In Washington state, they are even having an election to decide how elections should be run.
There are plenty of issues at play in the U.S. right now. Just like us, the state of the economy is top of mind to most voters, along with rampant inflation. But after that, the issues down south have a uniquely American flavour.
Abortion, the issue that dares not speak its name in Canada, is a hot-button topic. Gun control is always a temperature riser. But there is one issue that never arises in Canada, and for which we should be thankful.
Election deniers – people who believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the 2020 election was fraudulent – dominate the Republican party. According to the New York Times, more than 370 Republican candidates, a majority of those running for the top offices, have questioned or denied the results of the election. An NBC poll found 61 percent of Republican voters don’t believe Joe Biden won the election fairly. In several states, Republican candidates for secretary of state – the person who supervises the election – are active deniers. In Arizona, the candidate participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection and is a member of an anti-government militia. And he could win!
This is where we can be thankful to be living in safe, boring Canada. Nobody questions the validity of our elections – the results, sure, but not the validity. Everyone in Canada casts votes in exactly the same way, supervised by a non-political government agency, whereas the U.S. is a crazy quilt of 50 states running things their way, and where the person in charge of the election can be an elected official. Again in Arizona, the Democratic candidate for governor is the sitting secretary of state – the supervisor of the election – and she refuses to recuse herself, leaving the door open for Republicans to claim election fraud if they lose.
Anything is open to conspiracy. As you’ve heard, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul was attacked in his own home by a hammer-wielding nutcase, who apparently wanted to kidnap Nancy. Paul Pelosi suffered a fractured skull. Instead of sympathy, dozens of Republicans and their media supporters have hinted at an untold story about Mr.Pelosi, based on nothing at all.
American democracy is descending into lunacy, an alternate universe where any conspiracy theory is considered possible, based on nothing more than a radio talk show host’s blather.
I think, I pray, that Canadians are still too level-headed to sink to American levels. But then, we do have a premier who was an open-line radio host, so ….
(By the way, there is an election in Alberta on Tuesday, the byelection called in Medicine Hat to give Danielle Smith a seat in the legislature. I hope the voters there send a message to Smith and elect the Alberta Party candidate and party leader Barry Morishita, a longtime local politician, and not a carpetbagger like Smith.)
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