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this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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sigh, As a Canadian, I find it odd that the US doesn't have independant and non-partisan agencies responsible for running elections.
For instance, the federal elections are conducted by Elections Canada (https://www.elections.ca/home.aspx), Ontario provincial elections are conducted by Elections Ontario (https://www.elections.on.ca/en.html), Québec provincial elections are conducted by Élections Québec (https://www.electionsquebec.qc.ca), etc.
The US was originally envisioned as a federation of independent states, and the Constitution reflects that. Our elections are all run by the states. The states select their senators and representatives to send to the federal legislature. The states select the President.
In fact, originally, our senators were selected by the state legislatures, not a statewide election.
Even today, the popular vote doesn't really matter in the Presidential election. Those elections simply inform the state how to appoint electors to the Electoral College. Some states are "all or nothing", some states appoint them proportional to the popular vote.
As such, how those representatives and senators are chosen is left to the individual states, and how the elections are run is the domain of the state.
The Constitution specifically delegates that authority to the States, though, it includes a provision that the federal legislature can claw back that authority in whole or in part by simply writing new laws. The Voting Rights Act, for a great many years, demanded that the various racist states in the South had to have changes to their election process vetted by the Courts before being implemented. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Roberts, declared racism was over and gutted that requirement. That's when you started to see a bunch of this tomfuckery.
Interesting, thanks for that. I'll do more research to understand the American context.
As an American, I wholeheartedly agree. It's horrible.
If we had them, the GOP would say it’s rigged and would spread lies to defund and dismantle the independent body. That’s what they do with independent bodies who don’t support their lies.
Yeah! Canadian elections are still far from perfect. We still have first past the post and the size of constituencies can vary wildly. But it's still vastly better than what Americans have. Elections Canada is very good at being non partisan and having reasonable rules for voting. There's countless options for ID and even options if you have absolutely no ID.
This is because every election here is run by the State or local governments. The President is the only office here that people in multiple states vote on, and even that election is really the weighted result of separate State elections, due to the Electoral College. The Federal Government can set standards and regulations for elections, but the States administer them.
I actually think this is a good thing. If a fascist were to be elected President, and there were a central Federal body administering elections, then the President could just put a crony into that position and do a lot of harm. But not only can he not do that, but since the elections are controlled in each State the President doesn't have any direct influence on the counting of votes at all.
Unless he makes one of his perfect phone calls of course.