YES: Aleisha Hendry
The Canadian electoral system is infinitely better than the American one.
For one thing, we have more than one party to vote for that actually stands a chance of winning. In the U.S. they basically have two choices: Republican or Democrat.
What if you like one or two things of one party and one or two things with the other party? How on earth would you ever decide? At least in Canada, we have three main choices with a couple offshoots that you could cast your vote for and maybe get a seat or two.
Plus, the U.S. has this awful thing called the Electoral College. It’s a completely backwards system that gives each state a certain number of votes and whoever has the majority of those state votes gets to be president. It’s not about the popular vote at all. Al Gore had the most individual votes in the 2000 U.S. election, but by the Electoral College voting system, George W. Bush had the most state votes and won the election. We all know what happened after that.
Voting for your MP, and the most number of MPs of any one party is the majority party. This is far superior for voting for the one individual who will lead the country. Given the two options some election years in the states, it’s no wonder no one’s interested in voting.
NO: Will Stodalka
Election Politics is a blood sport no matter where you go, but you just won’t feel the splatter unless you take a trip down south.
Canadian politicians have their occasional meanness, but nowhere is it more mean than the U.S. Its lack of sanity means it's much more entertaining than anything Mulcair, Harper or the others could come up with.
By the time you read this, it could either be a Mr. Mormon Moneybags running the country, or the guy with an African-name who won despite seventeen percent of the voting population thinking he's a secret Muslim.
The problem is are Canadian politicians have, historically, been too sensible to be entertaining. They just can’t rank when you put them against American craziness.
Think about the stupidest thing you've heard a Canadian politician say during an election season, and it doesn't even come close to just about one sentence Michelle Bachmann said in any given week during 2011.
Not only that, but I doubt that Canadian politicians could be as politically savage as the mildest U.S. SuperPAC.
America is a land deeply conflicted about where it wants to go. The Republicans want it to be a world where cash rules everything around them, and the Democrats just want to be a little bit more like Canada. Those two visions create a deep generation conflict that can’t be rationally solved.
And conflict is the key to any type of great entertainment.
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Each week editorial staff take turns engaging in debate on a hot topic. These debates are intended to explore both sides of an issue and arguments expressed here are chosen by flip of the coin, therefore they do not necessarily reflect the true opinion of the duelist.
