You know you work in a bureaucracy when. . .

The most important report(s) you write all year require accurate use of copy and paste more than any other single skill.

I just spent half an hour developing a comment bank for math and French. The comments are cookie-cutter-like; I choose the expectation from the list, modify it to reflect what I actually taught, and add words to indicate which level the child is working at (like "accurately" or "imprecisely"). The math ones aren't too bad, because I teach to the expectations. But my French program is so far beyond what the curriculum expects, it's just unreal trying to bring it down to that level. In my last school, I ignored the curriculum expectations entirely while doing French comments, but my principal won't let me do that here, so the comments are doomed to inaccuracy and bureaucratic mumbling.

Have I mentioned before that I hate report cards?

Electoral Reform in Two Countries

Last May, I signed a petition and got myself on a mailing list for an organization called Fair Vote Canada. As its name implies, this group is a grassroots campaign to change the electoral system in Canada to get rid of some of its inherent inequalities. Having learned more about the American voting system in the last few days than I ever knew before, I can see some parallels here between the reforms we need in Canada and the ones Americans need (IMO). Here's a summary:

1) The Electoral College - this system works to disenfranchise voters in states that swing predominantly to either side. As such, it needs to be scrapped. A truly proportional government should not require such a thing. At the very least, it needs to be changed so that the electoral votes in each state reflect the percentages of actual votes - that is, if 47% of the popular vote went to Kerry, then 24 out of 50 electoral votes should go to him. A simple change that would benefit the entire electoral system. (As an aside: does anyone have any numbers about differing voter turnouts in different states? If I'm right about the effects of the electoral college, the turnout should have been significantly higher in Florida and Ohio than it was in, say, Texas.)

The Canadian equivalent to this issue is our first-past-the-post system. Basically, we don't elect a prime minister. We elect a Member of Parliament in our own local riding. The party that ends up with the most MP's elected across the country forms the government, and that party's leader (also an MP) is the Prime Minister. The problem is that it is entirely possible, in a close race, for an MP to win a seat with only about 35% of the popular vote. My MP had 37%, and the runner-up had 35%. The next runner-up had, I believe, 25%, and the rest went to the little guys. That means 63% of the voters feel they are unrepresented by their MP. The result is strategic voting (don't vote for the third guy, because it reduces the chances that the first-place guy will have enough; it's Ralph Nader all over again.) The other result is a lower voter turnout at every election since I started voting.

2) A standardised, paper voting system. I'm sorry, guys - the electronic version, or even the punch-card version, is too prone to error. One sheet of paper per voter with those little computer-read bubbles to colour in, and a whole bunch of golf pencils, means a lot more trees, and a much more transparent system. Also, it needs to be standardised as much as possible across the entire country. I realize that every district has different stuff they're asking about, that it's voting for all the little guys and the big guys and some referendum-type questions too; so long as the basic format and rules for appearance and logos are standard, things would be much improved. If you need to watch a video to figure out how to vote, then it's too complicated. If the information on the video doesn't match what voters were told by officials, or the machine fails to work properly - you've got bedlam.

There is no parallel for this in Canada. Municipal votes are counted with a bubble-card system and tallied instantly; all other votes involve marking an "x" in the little circle next to the name of the candidate you want. Simple. Transparent. Counted by hand, so it's unwieldy (believe me, I've done the counting.) Generally much easier to see where things go wrong, if anything does. (It did, in the Quebec referendum in 1995; it was a big outcry, too.)

3) I don't know if you have this one or not, but I didn't see any sign of it. Do you have a non-partisan Chief Electoral Officer? In Canada, this is the only person not allowed to vote, because their job requires them to be impartial. This one person oversees the election process, including registration, hiring, printing of ballots, etc, etc. They also hire electoral officers for each riding. I think these people are allowed to vote, but they are not allowed to show any preference for one party over another. It eliminates potential conflicts of interest caused by, say, business affiliations.

There. That's my take on the American election process, from the point of view of an outsider out to change her own system.

Comments welcome. :)

Query re: Remembrance Day

Question for American friends: are you familiar with the poem "In Flanders Fields", bu John MacCrae? If so, where did you learn it?