Dec.10

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It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas, Day 6: Merry Christmas America, Part I

Reader T.B. in Powell, OH posed this question to readers: "Imagine you were going to give a Christmas gift to the United States. Specifically, a law, institution, initiative, civic structure, or like commodity imported from some other nation. What gift would you bestow?"

And now, half a dozen answers:

• S.C. in Farmington Hills, MI: A single-payer Universal Health Care System.
  
  
• D.H. in Leeds, England, UK: My gift to the U.S. would be a Federal Electoral Commission with the power to set House district boundaries and enforce universal practices for elections.
  
  In the U.K., a non-partisan boundary commission ensures parliamentary constituencies are broadly equal in terms of population and are relatively geographically compact. They also oversee the rules for local, regional and national elections. It means an end to gerrymandering and politicians preventing voters they think "unsound" from voting. And remember, England invented the rotten borough long before Elbridge Gerry was born.
  
  Free and fair elections in the USA? That would be new.
  
  
• M.L. in Simpsonville, SC: I know, most people would probably guess a Canadian would suggest healthcare, and I do miss my Canadian Medicare very much. But I'd like to gift something else: plastic (polymer) money in a rainbow of colors. I'm still, even after several years of living here in Canada's Trousers, fumbling through U.S. bills whenever I have to pay in cash. Just make them colourful! So much easier. Go look at the Viola Desmond $10 bill and tell me that doesn't stand out more than the classic American greenback. Sorry, Alexander Hamilton, Canada's money is just cooler. Now if we could just get it to be worth the same, life would be grand.
  
  (Also please get rid of the penny, we don't need them weighing down our wallets anymore.)
  
  
• L.S. in Greensboro, NC: I would give this country South Korea's response to an insurrection.
  
  
• S.C. in Mountain View, CA: My gift to the United States comes from Finland, which, as I write this is the only country with a score of 100 from Freedom House. The gift is a unicameral parliamentary system of government with the parliament elected from multi-member districts using open-list proportional representation.
  
  
• S.K. in Sunnyvale, CA: I could think of a number of things I'd love to gift to America, from any number of European countries—gun laws, healthcare, worker protections, consumer protections, environmental protections, the list goes on. But what I can't figure out is how to get Americans to accept such gifts rather than exchange them for continued coddling of their toxic attitudes toward these topics.

We'll be doing this question for a few more days. If you care to weigh in, send your picks to comments@electoral-vote.com. (Z)