It's Election Season

And not just in the US but everywhere:

The half-brother of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he believes former U.S. president Donald Trump is “genuine,” while also urging Canadian government workers to quit their jobs in a four-minute-long video.

In a post on X on Monday, Kyle Kemper, who shares a mother with Trudeau, discussed how U.S. politics could affect Canada. In the video, which had been viewed almost 30,000 times by Tuesday afternoon, he endorsed Trump ahead of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5.

He said that he believes in his gut that Trump is a “genuine person” who wants to “leave a good legacy.”

“In a nutshell, (a Trump presidency is) going to mean a shift in the vibration of Canada. It’s going to open up the opportunity for government innovation within Canada, likely massive tax reform in Canada,” he said.

Kemper added that Trump said he was willing to get rid of income tax during a sit-down interview with podcast host Joe Rogan and that “policies in America will come up in Canada.” Many Canadians left the country after becoming successful, he said, because the “tax regime is just crazy” and not a “good environment to operate in.” When the tax system is fixed, he explained, “all that money is going to come back to Canada.”

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Why, that sounds criminal to me:

The FBI was working Tuesday with authorities in the Pacific Northwest to search for suspects after ballot boxes were burned in Washington and Oregon, damaging hundreds of votes a week before Election Day.

In Oregon, Portland police said they responded to reports of a fire at a ballot box in the Buckman neighborhood at about 3:30 a.m. Monday. Thirty minutes later and less than 15 miles to the north, Vancouver police responded to an arson at a ballot box.

Later Monday, Portland police released two photos of a vehicle investigators believe was tied to both fires. It was described as a black or dark-colored 2001-2004 Volvo S-60 with no front license plate and an unknown rear plate.

“We don’t know the motive behind these acts,” Assistant Chief Amanda McMillan said in a statement. “We do know acts like this are targeted and they're intentional and we’re concerned about that intentional act trying to impact the election process."

 

 

Gee, how many people want welfare?:

Premier Scott Moe and the Saskatchewan Party won a fifth consecutive majority government Monday, losing in the province’s big cities but retaining its iron grip on rural areas.

Moe’s party was shut out by Carla Beck’s NDP in Regina and lost all but two seats in Saskatoon.

However, it found enough support everywhere else to be elected in 35 seats in the 61-seat legislature, compared with 26 for the NDP.

 

 

Will the election in Nova Scotia go the way of New Brunswick?:

Polling aggregator 338Canada in March projected support for the PCs at 48 percent in the province, compared to 25 percent for the Liberals and 23 percent for the NDP.

A survey released by Angus Reid on March 13 said that the top provincial issues for Nova Scotians were cost of living and health care, with 70 percent and 67 percent of the population respectively pointing to these topics as issues of concern. The next item was housing, with 40 percent expressing concern about this issue.

 

 

And elsewhere:

Georgia’s ruling party is leading the official results of Saturday’s parliamentary election after a crucial vote which could decide whether the country pivots to embrace the West or falls back into Russia’s orbit.

Many Georgians viewed the vote as a make-or-break referendum on the opportunity to join the European Union. Initial figures suggest turnout is the highest since the ruling Georgian Dream party was first elected in 2012.

Georgia’s Central Election Commission said Georgian Dream won 52.99 per cent of the vote with the majority of the vote counted. Not all paper ballots and votes cast by Georgians abroad have been counted, and it is unclear when a final result could be announced.

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The Liberal Democratic Party-Komeito coalition's failure to retain its Lower House majority in Sunday’s general election begs the question — will Shigeru Ishiba remain as prime minister?

Under Japan’s parliamentary system, lawmakers vote for who among them should be the country's head of government. If the two chambers of parliament choose different lawmakers, the vote of the more powerful Lower House will supersede that of the Upper House.

This typically means that the president of the party that holds the majority in the Lower House, or that of the larger party in a coalition with control of the chamber, becomes the prime minister. Such was the case on Oct. 1, when Ishiba, having emerged victorious in the LDP presidential election a week earlier, was voted into the position.

However, in the wake of Sunday’s general election, the LDP and Komeito find themselves with just 218 seats, including three LDP members who were not endorsed by the party — short of the 233 needed for control of the 465-seat Lower House. As such, there is no guarantee that Ishiba has the numbers to remain as prime minister.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that the largest opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP), has enough votes of their own to elect party chief Yoshihiko Noda into power. The CDP secured 148 seats on Sunday.