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Again, this is not to detract from Trump’s legitimacy as the duly elected president of the United States. Nor is it necessarily an indictment of the rules under which he was elected: they may have other compensating virtues. It is only to say that, if one of the defences of the first-past-the-post system of voting — for that, in its essentials, is how U.S. presidents are elected, as Canadian members of Parliament are — is that it prevents extremists and yahoos from coming to power, it has just been shown to do the opposite, in much the same way and under much the same circumstances as earlier it delivered Toronto into the trembling hands of Rob Ford.

There are lots of other arguments for electoral reform, and lots of other defects of first past the post. Were electoral college votes awarded proportionally, for instance, elections would be contested across the map, rather than being confined, as now, to a handful of “battleground states.” Third-party candidates would have a fighting chance to make their case, rather than facing the accusation that they were splitting the vote, or that their supporters were “throwing away” theirs. But the Trump disaster may give new urgency to the reform cause.

The issue is very much alive in any event. Among the more intriguing contests Tuesday was a state ballot in Maine, a majority of whose electors voted to adopt ranked balloting in all future state votes. This, just days after Prince Edward Islanders voted in a plebiscite to trade in first past the post for a mixed-member proportional system — which, if enacted into law, would make P.E.I. the first jurisdiction in Canada to crack the FPTP monopoly. (The premier is casting doubts on the legitimacy of the exercise, on the grounds that only 36 per cent of the electorate voted, a standard that would invalidate most municipal elections in this country.)

Meanwhile, municipalities in Ontario are now debating whether to exercise the discretion given them by recent provincial legislation to move to ranked balloting. And of course, there’s that little matter the federal parties are currently discussing. I don’t want to say Trump’s election clinches the case, but it’s a yuge consideration.