Good start. Calls are also excellent. Then get your neighbors to do the same.
For controversial stuff, you want tens to hundreds of outreach events recorded. It doesn’t take all that much for electeds to spell a festering primary threat.
When the maze is only dead ends, why is it surprising that people disengage?
Because it’s volunteering to cede power. If that’s one’s choice, call it what it is.
If your elected is truly stonewalling you, find their last competitive election. Reach out to their opposition. If it truly doesn’t exist, found or find someone who will found it.
(The one easy step you may have skipped is mailed letters. If your elected or electorate is older, this may be how they filter feedback.)
The last time there was a competitive election in my district was the 70's before the state was gerrymandered to hell and back.
Too many people vote for a candidate just because of the little r or d next to their name on the ballot.
i know i voted against the referendum question last week to consider moving to a US inspired elected senate system. i dont think we need that pageantry
I'm familiar with American and Swiss elections. In both, the principal threat to an incumbent is from an own-party challenger to their seat.
For an incumbent, particularly one in a comfortable seat, an opposition candidate is usually not an issue. But someone from inside the camp is annoying and requires rhetorical contorting and lots of spending, spending that can then leave one vulnerable to an otherwise-benign opposition candidate. (Also, motivated activists are annoying in the best way.)
A smart elected–in these systems–will thus take a call to defuse anger before it develops into organized activism.
It does technically have power, but it's like the King's power to veto UK legislation - he can do it precisely once and then he'll be stripped of the power.
Honestly this old chestnut comes up time and time again.
As much as many people would love the King/Queen to put the politicians in their place sadly there are two problems.
First, the monarch's role is effectively only ceremonial these days. Even "The King's speech" during opening of parliament is actually a piece of paper written by the ruling-party of the day, the King just sits there in his fancy regalia and reads it verbatim.
Second, if you are referring to veto during the royal ascent process. As per Wikipedia, the King does not have pure veto power, his options are:
- grant royal assent, thereby making the bill an act of Parliament.
- delay the bill's assent through the use of reserve powers, thereby invoking a veto.
- refuse royal assent on the advice of his or her ministers.
Not my area of expertise, but at a guess.
I think that is the reason the His Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition exists as a formalised concept (i.e. the party that came second in the elections), i.e. in the scenario you envisage, the King would still refuse it on the advice, but that of the recognised opposition minister (Leader of The Opposition).
But in reality an early election would likely be triggered the normal way well before things reached that state of affairs.
It would afterall be quite extraordinary circumstances if both the Prime Minister and Leader of The Opposition were pushing the king to grant ascent to a piece of law but the King still felt he should to refuse !
Canadian MPs are electeds. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the Canadian Senate being referred to as an elected body—it’s irrelevant to the above.
Parties select their representatives who run in the election.
The system basically guarantees that insiders cannot be removed.
It's the property of a candidate being affiliated with a party - an indirect part of the election - that is run by the parties rules that are generally less than entirely democratic in nature.
Liberals NDP and Greens would never form a government with the Conservatives so the liberals are effectively always in power.
Which means insiders in the liberal party are in charge and voting is partly irrelevant unless you're voting for the conservatives, but they would need an actual straight majority.
Th Bloc has 21 seats, and has had as many as 54. They would certainly ally with the conservatives. (Not the modern maple maga variety, but old school PC).
I know two seats is not "a force" but saying they'll never have another than one seems silly in this context.