Electoral reform never seems to quite fall off the agenda. The presidential debacle in the U.S. -- Clinton won the popular vote but Trump will be president, just like Gore and Bush in 2000 -- has rekindled the debate down there.

Since we're supposed to already have democracy, it always comes as a surprise to realize we aren't there yet.

You'd think we were stuck in the Britain of the mid-1800s, the heyday of Chartism. It was a mighty mass movement of working people whose lives and communities had been shattered by, among other things, free trade! Their solution wasn't a Marxist overthrow of "the ruling class" but extending the vote to all (meaning, at the time, all men) rather than only the rich.

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I'm in favour of a primarily negative approach to electoral reform. I think Justin Trudeau hit the right note when he said this election should be the last first-past-the-post election in Canadian history. Negative isn't always so negative. This election was mainly about negating Stephen Harper, and only secondarily, who'd replace him. The first thing we do: kill first-past-the-post.

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