(no subject)

[the_fantastic_ms_fox]

 "If you want to make change, why not run for office?"

 

As I have learned from running for office in the past, our democratic systems are not set up to create choice. They exist to permit a range of choices from people who can clear the barriers to entry.

 

And the larger the scale of election, the greater the barrier to entry. Municipally, it's a $100 deposit, 25 signatures, and your party needed to have something like 40 people in some kind of pre-existing association. Not much of a problem - if you have $100. Provincially, you need a $250 fee (refunded only if you get 15% of the vote), 75 signatures form your riding (which usually requires tabling in public as most people in large cities don't actually have 75 friends in one riding) and you need an accountant to act as your auditor. Federally, it's 100 signatures and $1000. And you still need to an accountant as an Auditor. Also, until recently, the federal party registration system was set up to effectively bar small parties from forming.

 

The idea that "the costs increase with scale" doesn't really make sense. Vancouver elects 26 people from a pool of 603,000 - that's 22,000 citizens per position. It's about 50,000 per position provincially and 110,000 federally.

 

Assuming a person can run, ze is now faced with the question: "do you have a hope in hell?"

 

Successful candidates spend around $50,000 and have 10 people on the ground at a time at any level.

 

To partially overcome this, municipally, there's a candidate's guide where everyone can pitch their platform. But provincially and federally, this does not exist. Britain has (or used to have) a system where TV would have to broadcast you.

 

Additionally, under our first-past-the-post system where vote-splitting is common, the most effective strategy to make change is often *not* to run under your actual positions, but to become almost indistinguishable from the candidate who you consider to be the biggest threat (cf: Jim/James Green in Vancouver, 2005)

 

The average high-school council election presents a more accessible platform for democracy than does anything offered by our governments.