Canada's going to have an election next month. That's right. And it just got announced. What? You mean that they don't get a year and a half of insipid theater criticism and television smear ads? How can they possibly make a decision? They don't have enough misinformation to make a bad choice!
This election has made me believe that some sort of legislative remedy is necessary for our system. For starters, how about nobody can declare their candidacy until January 1 of the election year? No nominating contests until March, finish those in June, Conventions in August/September? So it ends sorta similar, except there's a whole year cut out? We could get even more radical as well. Ultimately, though, what nobody seems to comment upon is that a longer campaign season=more money that needs to be raised. Democrats don't take as much money from special interests since the ActBlue direct donor model has taken off, but there's still quite a bit from those interests. Not as much as the Republicans do, to be sure. In any event, more money usually means more corruption, right? Less campaign time means less corruption. And lest you say that this isn't enough time, let me remind you that no other democracy I know of takes more time to elect a leader, and we'll still have nearly a year to figure it out.
One would think good-government types would have figured this out. Congress really needs to step in here.
