One thing I appreciate about Canadian elections is how quickly they happen. An election is called, campaigning is like a month or two and then we find out the new government just hours after casting our votes.
You’re a non-global superpower with a total population smaller than California, 90% of which lives 100 miles or less from the US border. It would be bizarre if your elections were as complicated as the United States.
The United States isn’t an exception here. There are many other countries with larger populations and/or that have dramatic geopolitical influence. Canada just isn’t one of them.
US elections are definitively complicated, but for no good reason. It is a lot because of the complex old laws, traditions, first-past-the-post and that primary elections don’t happen together but individually in different states over a period of one year.
If we would just use the popular vote to decide the election and use ranked choice voting we would have election done much faster and would pickup a candidate, that most people would be happy with.
RCV already showed in Alaska that it makes it very hard for the least desirable candidate to win when there are two better candidates that people are divided over (i.e. with FPTP Palin (who most Alaskans hate) would normally win)
