Election comparison and contrasts

 The Republican National Convention, opening prayer, 1904.

As folks here know, Canada just had an election.

And we're having ours.

I can't help but be envious of the Canadian election practices a bit, although the reason they exist is that they have a parliament, not a congress like we do, and that means that their chief executive is simply a member of the party that takes the majority of the House.  So, that means that their election is a nationwide house election, rather than a sort of single purpose election to a degree, like our Presidential election. You can't really vote, that is, for the Prime Minister unless you live in that "riding".

And that naturally makes for a fast election.

In contrast, ours now last for over a year, which is not really a good thing. And the staggered primaries man that some states have truly unnatural influence over a nationwide process.

This is something that could be fixed, and it probably really ought to be.  Spending millions of dollars over the course of a year in a staggered series of elections is fatiguing in the extreme and it seems mostly to just wear the voters out, as well as giving undue influence to a few states, and the real die hard faithful of each party that live in those states.

Or, alternatively, we could go back to the old "smoke filled room" days when parties basically picked their candidates in the convention, without a lot of nationwide politicking (although there was certainly some).  The candidates we got in those days were certainly no worse than the ones we get now.