> emailed 9 senators and heard back from one

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.

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8note an hour ago | parent | next [-]

electeds? primary threat? i think that might backfire in the canadian senate

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

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JumpCrisscross an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> electeds? primary threat?

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.

	▲	munk-a an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Ah, to clarify, Canada's upper house is basically a house of lords equivalent that we expect to be full of puffed up nobodies that get paid a too generous stipend to sit there and keep their mouths shut. Canada has one elected congress body (the one we all talk about) and then this vestigial senate which is generally expected to sit there and silently approve everything that passes through it. 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.

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munk-a an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah, I think it'd be excellent if we could just disband our upper house and while it's worth pushing them to act on this bill I loathe the senate's continued existence and would rather be in a position where this emergency call happened prior to it passing the house.

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buckle8017 41 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

There are no primaries in Canada at all.

Parties select their representatives who run in the election.

The system basically guarantees that insiders cannot be removed.

	▲	seanw444 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That actually sounds crazy to me. At least for the House of Commons. I'm amenable to upper chambers of bicameral legislatures being indirectly elected. That's how the US Senate used to be before the constitution was amended.