US border insecurity

Statistics:

1. The American-Canadian border is the longest shared border in the world.
2. The American-Canadian border is the only shared border between highly developed (GDP per capita > $20,000) in North America. there are 30 such borders in the world, 3 are with Saudi Arabia and its rich gulf neighbors, and the other 26 are in Western Europe.

More little known facts on border security:

1. The longest open border treaty is the Common Travel Area between The United Kingdom and Ireland. It was signed by Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George. It has only come under threat recently by the Tories. The history of the relationship is fascinating and complicated about why Britain is not a member of Schengen and the Common Travel Area was not superseded by the Schengen Treaty.

The vast majority of wealthy counties in the world which border another wealthy country are in a customs union together with free movement. There are only 4 exceptions to this, Andorra is not a member of the Schengen area, and it counts as twice since it borders both France and Spain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are in the middle of a dispute right now, and the border has been closed between the two. The only other border between wealthy countries which has customs is between the United States and Canada.

This list grows even shorter when you consider that Andorra and the European Union are currently under negotiations to integrate Andorra into the common market. The current crisis with Qatar has to do with Saudi Arabia demanding that they cut off all relations with Iran, and unfortunately there are no signs of them cutting of Iran or Saudi Arabia backing down from their threats.

This leaves us with the United States and Canadian border. Two very wealthy nations which rank highly in every freedom metric. Canada generally does better than us, but the United States generally does well. Both countries have similar issues regarding the treatment of minorities, as a centuries long human rights issue which hasn't gone addressed, but this doesn't seem to be a reason to not have a customs union between us.

First of all, I do not expect this will be done within the next decade, mainly due to Donald Trump's opposition to cooperation with our allies.

If we were to further integrate our two economies we would need to have a common tariff, which would likely be done with Mexico at the same time. This would be basically an extension of NAFTA and make it so that our customs would be all integrated with countries outside of the bloc.

The next issue to be dealt with would be with Canada alone since the possibility of an open border with Mexico is not going to go anywhere with congress. This would be a formation of an Economic Union with Canada. The main difference here would be the free movement of labor and capital. Anyone may search for work or do business in the other country with no restriction.

Once we have a harmonized  tariff policy, we need to ensure our visa policies are integrated as well. I personally would like to replace the ESTA with pure visa-free entry, and the ETA in Canada as well, but this is unlikely to happen. The reason is that before these programs went into place there had never been even one attack on American or Canadian soil from any individual from the countries which require these programs since 1945. They seem to be more of a bother and provide basically no benefit. We would still have visas for countries where people would be likely to overstay, or state sponsors of terrorism, but for people from Western Europe there would be no visa at all. For people who need a visa they would all be multi entry visas which expire when the passport is replaced. There are currently differences in our visa policy when it comes to Mexico, Barbados, Bahamas, Brazil, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Papua New Guinea, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Cyprus, Croatia, and Hong Kong.

This is the biggest barrier of them all really. While over the last 4 years Canada has undergone a large effort to increase trade and improve their already good image to the rest of the world by increasing the ability of people to visit Canada, the United States has barely changed, and has been bullying Canada to have more restrictive visa policies to other countries. I won't be surprised if Parliament decides to end the ETA program and allow countries from places like Germany visit Canada again without pre-registration. Sandals and socks isn't that bad honestly.

There is a really big issue with our approach is outlined by Stuart Anderson in this article by Forbes describing how it is based on visa overstay rate which is calculated by the Department of Homeland Security. There is a really big issue here in that the actual numbers for who overstays their visa is highly inaccurate, andhighly flawed. It is going to be impossible to get a visa policy which accurately give the right nationalities true visa free entry as long as this is on the books. This is something which needs to be fixed as soon as possible, and an accurate method of determining who should have visas needs to be devised as soon as possible.

The other issue with the American-Canadian border is that most people don't know that it has only been closed for less than 100 years. The CBP tells the story on its website where the patrols were infrequent before prohibition, and the US Border Patrol was founded in 1924 to counter the importation of alcohol. If it wasn't for prohibition, we might have never closed the border with Canada in the first place.

Finding data on historical visa policies is difficult. Here is a collection of papers for information on this topic:

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6175134/
• https://www.imi-n.org/data/demig-data

I will to get high quality data myself to do a comprehensive study in the future. This is going to take some time and a lot of work.

We will probably need to harmonize our drunk driving laws, and I am personally in favor of being harder on drunk driving, but once that is done there will likely be no valid reason to keep the border closed. Ironic how the border was closed because American alcohol laws were more severe than Canada's and in order to open it again we will need to raise the penalty in the United States for drunk driving.

With a harmonized tariff policy and harmonized visa policy I believe the United States and Canada will see significant economic benefits and save billions of dollars every year on border enforcement. I expect we will see that an open border will be worth it.

The issue with joining Canada

Once again The Confederate States of America has elected a horrible human being to the presidency of my country. This time it could be worse than we have ever had before. We have survived Andrew Jackson, we have survived Richard Nixon, we have survived Ronald Reagan, and survived George W Bush. Now these backwards racists have elected a self obsessed mediocre reality TV star who talks about illegally deporting millions of people,  mocks people with disabilities, and brags about assaulting women. He lost by over 2 million votes and won three formerly solid democratic leaning states by a hair, winning the Electoral College. His economic policies are ludicrous and social policies are right out of the works of Nietzsche and Hitler. He is working hard to destroy our relationships with other countries, and had the support of Vladimir Putin. The cabinet he is assembling is the richest cabinet in American history, he promises to eliminate the EPA, cut back on social programs and give himself more tax breaks. We don't even know what his investments are, meaning we cannot know where his conflicts of interests lie. This is hell on earth and will take decades to recover from.

As a response, many liberals are talking about the west and northeast joining Canada. To be realistic, this would not happen because most Canadians will oppose it.

I am in Vancouver right now, routinely ranked as the most liveable city in North America, and I agree with Mercer's assessment. While Seattle, a city of 3.7 million people has only one light rail line which goes from the university which is close to downtown to the airport, Vancouver just finished the line to Coquitlam, which is over a half hour drive from downtown. The Seattle equivalent would be like building a line up to Lynnwood which will not happen for over 10 years. Portland, Oregon is in similar shape to Seattle with the MAX, lauded by Americans as the most European like city in the country, doesn't have the MAX running consistently from 6 am to midnight from the whole metro area, and in New York City crossing the Hudson from Manhatten to New Jersey is far from convenient. There is a reason the city is dominated by taxis. These are also some of the most progressive cities in America and their infrastructure is shit, have horrible vetting programs to keep white supremacists (read terrorists) out of their police force, the roads have literal potholes, and have traffic like no first world city. Quantitative quality of life surveys are dominated by German, Japanese, and Canadian cities at the top of the list. At the state level my home state of Washington has the most regressive tax code in the country, refuses to fund basic education, and can't pass a carbon tax because our media is so biased. We are next to Oregon the least corrupt state in the country as well. It would have cost less for me to go to UBC as a foreigner than my own university as an in state student.

The only people we have to blame are ourselves. The Democratic party's unwillingness to go to court over voting rights has hurt our country, and have not brought the Electoral College to National debates. The party is only as good or bad as its members. So why should Canadians want us to join their country? Even many liberal Americans tend to be uncommitted to no brainer policies like mass transit and carbon taxation. Our most progressive politicians frequently oppose such policies and our best and brightest refuse to run for president. Why should Canadians want us gumming up their election system?

On the other side Canadian politics is not as good as most Americans think. Stephen Harper successfully turned Canada into a petrostate and their currency is struggling as a result, increasing the prices of imports. It is going to take a long time to get out of this rut they are in. Justin Trudeau just approved multiple large pipelines as Obama vetoed the Keystone XL pipeline and Trudeau is making it unnecessarily harder for tourists from Europe to visit. Their election system is so bad that despite never winning a majority in an election Stephen Harper survived as PM for three. No party has won a majority of the vote up here in decades. Canada is wonderful, and I love it so much, but is not the utopia many Americans think it is. If they had an influx of more moderate Americans from California and New York electing members of parliament Canada would probably lose many of the programs like Medicare progressives in America yearn for. Never forget the Public Option was killed when Democrats had a filibuster proof majority and all but one Democrat in the Senate voted for the Patriot Act. Russ Feingold was defeated in his next election, when he should have been a presidential candidate in 2004. Why would Canadians want us to join?

Instead of crying about leaving the United States let's clean our own house first. Call our politicians to build infrastructure and fund education. Fix our election systems and cut carbon pollution. Make a more progressive tax code and call for an open border with Canada. Make it easier for European and Japanese tourists to visit the United States. When our politicians break their promises, kick the bastards out. Turn off cable news and read newspapers written by scientists, not public relations/journalism majors. Call for people to speak reality and end this culture where everyone is entitled to their own facts. When our districts are gerrymandered, use the Voting Rights Act and the courts to make our elections fair. Make us a country which would not pull Canada backwards but push them forward.

Once we do this joining Canada would be possible. Once we do this, we won't have to.

Book Review: "Does North America Exist?"

I checked a book out from my school's library by a Canadian economist Stephen Clarkson "Does North America Exist?" which analyzed the impacts of NAFTA up to 2008 when the book was written and various impacts seen by the three nations involved.

I read this in what has become my usual way where I don't read every word but do more of a Cosby Method type of reading which allows me to read the book much faster while still learning what the book has to say. I find this easiest with physical books which is why I still read physical books along with the electronic copies which I find to be harder to read quickly than a paper copy. I highly recommend the Cosby Method.

The first big compliment I have for the author is he did a superb way of academically laying out his book so that people can easily answer any question they have within his topic. The other glowing point is the 80 pages of references he uses which is very professional.

One main argument is how NAFTA has a power imbalance given how the United States has the 1/4 of the population and over 80% of the economy in the agreement. This means that there is a reduction in the decisions Mexico and Canada can make unilaterally when it comes to decisions effecting all the involved nations. There are solutions for this, with a court system with NAFTA and other actions which would balance out the power dynamics of the free trade area.

The book discusses how NAFTA effects agriculture and textiles which are the two most controversial industries effected by NAFTA. It lays out the statistics on the arguments downplaying most misconceptions on both sides of the aisle. It really makes it clear that NAFTA was neither an absolute bust to the economy or a cure-all for all the economies woes.

Banks are a non-issue more or less in NAFTA since there is no real central organization dealing with transborder banking, and the book lays out details. Other issues include capital markets and copyright law. I highly recommend the detailed descriptions on these issues.

In general, those are the basic arguments the book makes, and the data behind it makes them more or less irrefutable. I have learned a good bit from this book.

ISBN: 978-0-8020-9653-1

Why is Canada doing better than America?

Today I found a great article on the BBC talking about how Canada has a much lower unemployment rate than most European countries and now has a shortage of labor for the booming oil sands in Alberta.

This made me wonder why Canada is doing so much better than the US and Europe and what the underlying differences are between the three major economics (Europe is for obvious reasons more fragmented but their economy is in recession as a whole and that is where people are coming from).

Looking at the underlying features between the US and Canada they are very similar. They have extremely similar labor laws, extremely similar proportions on who works in what industries, and almost every other major figure is similar except for three important features:

1. Canadians are paid more at the lower wage levels.
2. Capital Gains are taxed at a progressive rate in Canada, but not in the United States.
3. It takes only a day to start a business in Canada and they are ranked by the World Bank as the best country in the world, meaning competition in the private sector.

These three features are why Canada is doing so well right now and are finding such a developed economy.

The first point, higher wage levels, means that there is a higher demand for goods and services in Canada at the local level nationwide than in the US or Europe. The US is having a lagging economy right now, almost certainly due to lower consumer demand. Wal-Mart and other retailers are not finding people to purchase their services which is contributing to poor economic performance. Companies cannot stay open if no one will buy their product. Canada doesn't have this problem because everyone working full-time can survive. This helps small businesses and the entire economy.

Taxing capital gains as regular income solves the problem of the government not losing a lot of money during a recession, which keeps deficit low. However, I can't observe a difference in the stock markets so it doesn't dissuade people from removing their money from the market.

The United States has a similar sector makeup, and the oil boom is isolated to Northern Alberta, and the United States is also having an increase in drilling in different regions. But Canada's entire economy is doing better than the US and Europe, so blaming the oil boom is not enough, since it accounts for less than 19% of the economy.

So, the response of the stock markets is the same, the sector makeup is the same, all but one major feature of these economies I find are comparable, and that feature is distribution of wealth.

After the recession in 2008 the rest of the world came back (except Europe, but only after the implementation of austerity) and there was high demand for goods and services. The average Canadian is paid more than the average American, their distribution of wealth is a lot more equitable, close to what Americans want actually. Because of this difference, the change in economic spending wasn't so large in these other countries. a lot of America's economic growth of the past 40 years was also based in a lot of lending, through a system of government incentives for people borrowing for houses, and schools, which is more than other countries that have seen more steady growth. When the economy collapsed, millions of workers were laid off, and demand struggled. Without massive incentives to change this fact and increase the quality of life we will continue to see a major shift in economic growth. Nick Hanauer (an entrepeneur) made a TED talk talking about how the economy is an ecosystem (I'm paraphrasing) and that it requires transactions to be made, and when one large group of people are unable to make the transactions the entire ecosystem/economy falls apart. Other developed countries don't have this problem like us, and it is the only major characteristic that separates the US and Canada.

If we want to see growth and faster recoveries from recessions we need to increase our economy from the bottom so more people can participate, because no entrepreneur can start a business in a market where there is no demand. This is the reason the American economy is stagnating. It is also similar to the reason why the European economy is in depression, because millions of people have had their income taken from them and the aggregate demand curve has collapsed, leaving firms new and old with no demand, decreasing employment, and decreasing GDP, creating a cycle that has been feeding on itself. Western Europe (which has had large economic ties for the past 40 years) is now divided between north and south (though it hasn't always been to the same extent) between the employed and the unemployed, and this has reduced demand for goods and until they find that people in Southern Europe have opportunities restored, I have little doubt Europe will remain in recession. Other major economies are still growing at increased rates (as long as they didn't implement austerity).

I also predict that Canada saw a reduction in their GDP growth in 2012 because they are so heavily tied to the American economy which hasn't been growing as fast as we need to.

We need more avenues to the middle class so everyone with the skill and will can be as well off as possible. It will be a huge boom to our country's economy.

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Canada
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Canada
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG economic growth by country where available
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0ehzfQ4hAQ Summary of distribution of wealth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKCvf8E7V1g TED Talk

The Left has a choice to make on peace

Foreign policy usually takes the back burner when it comes to politics. Neither party in America pushes hard for a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, human rights in China or North Korea, or other important issues. The left however has a large split today, and that is between people who support free trade and people who support tariffs, because of the negative effects of some free trade agreements.

Free trade has a number of large benefits. It allows people to find work in places that pay better and escape poverty in poorer countries (which has some disadvantages, nothing is perfect), it allows free travel to come on the scene which can fight the interethnic tensions and wars that often rise when travel is restricted. To have free travel you need free trade.

Free travel, the eventual elimination of customs between different countries and allowing people to move freely will have a lot of power to eliminate hatred between different groups of people. I strongly believe that if the people of Israel and Palestine could talk to each other and there were fewer restrictions on movement the conflict would diminish and they would find they have more in common than they believe. The same political debates, the same hopes, the same dreams, and the far right in both Israel and the PLO will fall making peace possible. I believe that if people from America and Mexico could easily talk to each other and we helped them fight the violence that ravages so many communities the racist tensions that exist with the far right in my country will have less influence. There are reasons why the southern border is a very Democratic area, even in Texas.

To do this requires free trade. Free trade will be the start, and then the left needs to get together and support free travel, and within the mechanisms of free trade labor needs to demand a living wage for an honest day's work. The status quo of no communication between nations brought more conflict and allowed people like Hitler to get entire nations to do the unspeakable, because most people didn't know what the other side was actually like. There is a reason there have been no wars within the EU (an previously EC) since World War II. Personally, I believe free travel is a critical part to world peace, and is worth the costs of free trade. I also don't see how the costs of free trade are permanent.

Open The Border

Over the past decade the United States government has been making coming into and out of this country harder. So much harder that I have found coming home from Canada is sometimes harder than leaving America going over to Canada for a weekend. The US-Canadian border is the longest shared border between any two countries in the world. It stretches across oceans (in Alaska, Washington, and Maine), cities divided (in Washington, Michigan, New York, and Vermont), buildings such as the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, making it one of the most unique borders in the world given its history and what lies across it. People's houses can stand in two countries at the same time across this continent. Most of the border is undefended and without fences. In some places there are roads that lie on the border. With this very lax security there are other places, like travelling by ferry or plane between the United States and Canada where travelers need to go through American customs twice when entering. In some places, like St. Regis, Quebec the border is completely open due to an old treaty with the Iroquois nation that allows people to move back and forth freely, and with no customs there is no way to know if the person crossing the border is Iroquois or not, and non-tribal members can and frequently do enter the reservation. Also, to keep the border secure ferry and air passengers go through American customs twice to come back to America. In other words, the border security between the US and Canada is spotty, and doomed to be ineffective.

To think that such a long border could possibly be secured, or even might need to be secured, given the relationship and history between our nations, and the treaty we have signed with the Iroquois to allow them to cross the border freely in their reservation seems ludicrous to me. It seems like a waste of money because no matter how much you spend to defend it there will always be a way around it. Any attempt to block smuggling is futile, because it is so easy to cross the border.

Because of these facts, I propose a different solution, open the border. How far? All the way. Eliminate customs on the American/Canadian border to save some money and increase trade between our two countries. There is no benefit to us by attempting to secure such a border and it is undefended at some points. It doesn't take a lot of research to learn this and despite the attempt to appear secure at places like  the Victoria ferry terminal, it is in fact about as defended against illicit trade as the German/Polish border, the only people who are actually inconvenienced are the honest ones.

We should do this soon. The only major concern I can see is drug policy, but the border customs are not effective for controlling drug control anyways. The best policy for drugs is that if you are caught with an illicit drug in America you will be arrested or fined. With guns the best policy would be that if caught with a handgun or other illicit weapon will be arrested or fined. We should arrange a treaty with Canada that if someone is arrested in either one of our nations we will respect their laws and let them hold the other nation's citizen for the legal amount of time and respect all other fines and punishments for breaking each other's laws.

With tourism into the United States and Canada, we will need to synchronize our policies and set up a commission of the United States Department of State and Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs so that before any policy is adopted the United States and Canadian governments need to agree. We will need to synchronize the countries that can enter our countries visa-free, and which ones will need a visa-on-arrival. Fortunately, the United States and Canada have extremely similar visa requirements, the only differences are regarding people from the Czech Republic, Papua New Guinea, Croatia, Samoa, Pitcairn Islands, Barbados, Falkland Islands, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Hong Kong, Gibraltar, and Vatican City. I don't see any difficulty in getting over this hurdle, if the American and Canadian governments cooperate. We can then make a process for entering our new union, that can be agreed on by both governments, with the following proposed tenants with my reasons for having them:

1. A machine readable or biometric passport. This is to make them harder to forge and make a strong electronic record of what passports have entered to prevent forgeries.
2. A return or onward ticket if entering by air. This is to make it easier so the government will know if you have overstayed your planned time.
3. Must not have committed a crime that would be considered a felony in the United States or Canada. There will be a way for people to rehabilitate after a certain amount of years for some crimes like drunk driving (a felony in Canada).

Canada and the United States will continue to have full sovereignty, their own currencies, their own governments, and their own traditions. The only thing I think should change is the amount of control on the borders, which is something that can be done.

How to fix America's election system

I have proposed a few ways to improve our election system in this country, and over the past few months I have further clarified my ideas and thinking about the issues have come to agree with almost everything FairVote proposes. They have a number of proposals to improve our country's system and I highly recommend them.

I am unhappy with my last post back in March on how to fix our election system and see one big issue with it which is that I proposed to continue to have a primary, which is bad because primaries tend to have lower turnout, having only one election increases turnout and increases the validity of the election. Voting twice is expensive and time consuming, which must be avoided.

Instead, I have a counter proposal with a better way, which is mostly similar to Fairvote's plan but not completely. I also want to put in some advantages I see with it.

Congressional election
Make Congress bigger. Eliminate the Senate. Make 600 seats in the House of Representatives and abolish the Senate to more accurately represent the views of the American people. The Senate unnecessarily bogs down the process to pass legislation which helps people who want to stop the status quo and makes it so that people who want to improve the country have an extra hurdle. With only 100 Senators it is easier for the same amount of money to have a much larger impact in lobbying (which saves money for lobbyists and hurts the people) and with the filibuster makes it so that minority rules. It makes the voices of people in Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, and Delaware far more important than people in California and Texas. The Senate is usually not representative of the American People, and if eliminated the House of Representatives could do exactly what their constituents tell them to do, which is the goal of Modern Democracy. Government of the People. It will make good legislation that the American people are behind easier to pass because it will need the majority of the Representatives to be passed and that is it. This will take a Constitutional Amendment, but so did the bill of rights, abolishing slavery, giving African Americans, women, and 18, 19, and 20 year olds the right to vote. Basically the biggest successes in our history. The Senate was created in the beginning to represent not the People but the State legislatures, the elite, so it must go! The Senate also will never fully represent the diversity of viewpoints in a state, and will never proportionally represent the views of Americans by any measure, and will never give the opportunity for third parties to get a voice. If we moved the Senate to an IRV system making that the only change we would find a very dull legislature with almost no diversity because there would be a lot of Libertarians. The Democrats and Republicans would both find a compromise in the Libertarian party with their votes, and because Democrats and Republicans would lose votes (how much each would lose to the Libertarians in initial votes is hard to say) it could be a very bland institution that is not representative of what the people want.

So we are left with a House of Representatives with 600 representatives, one per 500,000 on average, which is much better than today's one per 700,000. This will make every individual's vote go farther and have a larger impact. With more representatives it will be easier to get minority views represented accurately which will give a more accurate view on what the American People support, what Democracy is all about. I agree with Fairvote that there should be superdistricts where the candidates are elected by Single Transferable Vote. I support STV because it is about the candidates, people are not locked into one party or another, and it is easy to understand how to use. It is very similar to IRV which is already used in several cities in California. http://californiansforelectoralreform.blogspot.com/2012/08/2012-ranked-choice-elections-for-sf.html This is something Americans will understand. It also helps to hurt the impact of money from a few people in elections. Learn more about STV here in a Kiwi accent and then Learn where Ranked Voting systems are used.

By doing this it will substantially increase the possibility of third party viewpoints getting elected if the people agree with their policies and instead of voting against the party you like least which is necessary in First Past the Post voting you can vote for your favorite candidate regardless of how popular you think the person may be because if the person doesn't win your vote moves to your second favorite choice which is a great way to increase election turnout because votes will count. It will also make it harder to gerrymander, which is why the Republicans won the House in 2012 despite losing the popular vote. This will seriously improve our elections. Vice President Joe Biden,  Senator John McCain, when you both said you would support anything to increase voter turnout, this is what you are looking for.

Right now, if a third party were to develop in the United States it would create a spoiler effect for the party which comes closest to its views and the party that isn't split would win. I have already explained what happened in Canada in 2011. If it can happen in Canada's elections it can happen in ours.

Presidential election
For the same reason as Congressional election, we need a much simpler election to increase participation and make sure that every vote counts. This is Instant Runoff Voting, as Fairvote proposes. We will not need primaries and can make candidates run and since voters rank their candidates there is no spoiler effect. This will make elections much more efficient, allow third parties to run without spoiling the election and make every vote count.

One Canadian reason for Instant Runoff Voting, or at least Single Transferable Vote

I am looking at the last elections in Canada, which were in 2011 and they use First past the Post voting. Now, Stephen Harper is the Prime Minister, the Conservative Party's leader, and in the election he received 53.9% of the seats. The New Democrats under the late Jack Layton and the Liberals under Ignatieff both pulled the majority of the rest of the seats creating spoilers for each other across the country.

Wikipedia has really good information about the results in Canada in 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_by_riding_of_the_Canadian_federal_election,_2011 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_Canadian_federal_election,_2011 and I recommend looking at the elections where no party received over 50% of the vote. Here is a summary table of the votes received in each of the provinces from there to see the clear change in representation with FPP as opposed to what the people want. I understand this isn't as detailed, but the link above gives detailed information, this is meant as a quick overview.

Across Canada, the Conservative Party received 39.6% of the vote, yet they received 53.9% of the seats.

Province	Conservative	NDP/Liberal/Green	Conservative Seats	NLG seats
Alberta	66.8	33.2	96	4
British Columbia	45.5	54.5	58	42
Manitoba	53.5	46.5	79	21
New Brunswick	43.9	56.1	80	20
Newfoundland	28.4	71.6	14	86
Northwest Territories	32.1	67.9	0	100
Nova Scotia	36.7	63.3	36	64
Nunavut	49.9	50.1	100	0
Ontario	44.4	55.6	69	31
Prince Edward Island	41.2	58.8	25	75
Quebec	16.5	43.5	7	93
Saskatchewan	56.3	43.7	93	7
Yukon	33.8	66.2	100	0

All of these are percentages from the links above.

Looking at a lot of ridings we get a similar picture on a fine scale. The majority of Canadians voted for either the Liberals or the New Democrats, but since they could choose only one candidate their votes were split and Canadians are stuck with Stephen Harper, even though 60.4% of Canadians voted for left-wing parties. The American election that just happened saw a similar result where 51% of Americans voted for their Democratic Representative candidate yet the Republicans are in full control of the House of Representatives due to Gerrymandering. In Britain which also uses FPP the Conservative Party received only 36.05% of the vote but received 47.08% of the seats. The list of British elections that year again shows a large number of seats with the majority of voters voting for either the Liberal Democrats or Labour but still the Conservative gets elected, in many cases the winner won less than 40% of the vote, with the majority going liberal. In the cases where the Liberal Democrats or Labour won, or the one case where the Green candidate was elected if there was redistribution with IRV nothing would change because they would receive the votes from the other left-wing party which means that there would probably be no difference in victor assuming people vote for the same first choice and fill their ballots out correctly which is usually not a problem in the democracies that use proportional representation.

This is an inherent flaw with First Past the Post Voting. It does not represent the majority. America, Canada, and Britain need to adopt Instant Runoff Voting or Single Transferable Vote for our elections so that we can have an accurate representation of what the people want in our democracies and see third party participation with neglected issues rise to give Democracy back to the people! A better choice would be to choose Single Transferable Vote though, which would make it so that third parties would more likely be represented which would increase the possibility that minority views could be heard in our legislatures. This is why even though there should be 17 or 18 Greens in Australia's parliament despite using the alternative vote there is only one Green in parliament. By making large districts with multiple winners as Fairvote proposes we could have third parties represented and vote for the candidates we want without having either a) a very long ballot or b) vote for the party instead of the individual which locks voters into boxes for which party they prefer regardless of candidate.

This is not just western nations too. Malaysia in 2008 saw again the same pattern of a large difference between the votes received and the seats attained between their two large coalitions in 2008 where the right wing got 50% of the vote but 63% of the seats and they also use FPP. India saw their largest coalition receive 37% of the vote and 48% of the seats, and their third largest coalition received 21% of the vote but only 7% of their seats still with the same system. In my opinion a difference over 10% between votes and representation represents a system failure. In the United States in 2012 the Republicans received 48% of the vote and 54% of the seats, while not as extreme as these other countries is also worth noting because it is across the 50% mark.

But is it really that much better with ranked voting? The data says yes. In 2010 the Labor Party received 50% of the vote and 55% of the seats in Australia. In 2009 in Germany the CDU received 33% of the vote and received 40% of the seats while competing against 4 other major parties all of whom received seats. In 2010 in Sweden the Social Democrats received 30.7% of the vote and received 32% of the seats. Australia, Germany and Sweden are just three examples of the larger trend where proportional representation more accurately represents the views of the People and are much better systems. This is why I think we need to move to Fairvote's plan after looking at how India, Malaysia, Britain and Canada's elections reflect our own so much in minority rule with the same inherently broken election system while Australia, Germany, and Sweden have very accurate representation of what the people ask for in their parliaments. To quote CGPGrey from youtube, would anyone accept a sport where there was a 10% chance that the loser could win? Of course not, and we shouldn't accept it in our elections.

Learn more at www.fairvote.org and CGPGrey's channel on youtube.

Here is a map of where different systems are used: http://www.idea.int/esd/upload/ESD%20map-english.pdf