Uninterested Voters a Trial for Democracy

Voter turnout hit a historic low in 2008 and isn’t expected to improve.
Uninterested Voters a Trial for Democracy
Alison Loat (Courtesy of Samara)
Matthew Little
4/21/2011
Updated:
9/29/2015

<a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/ALoatoffice2010_medium.jpg"><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/ALoatoffice2010_medium.jpg" alt="Alison Loat (Courtesy of Samara)" title="Alison Loat (Courtesy of Samara)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-124429"/></a>
Alison Loat (Courtesy of Samara)

TORONTO—While the downtrodden masses of Middle Eastern autocracies risk bullets to call for change, Canadians find it an increasing bother.

Voter turnout hit a historic low in 2008 and isn’t expected to improve. Jon Pammett, a political science professor at Carlton University told The Epoch Times that with a clear front-runner and no pressing issue, there is no reason for anyone to vote now who didn’t vote before.

Add to that a pre-election poll indicating few Canadians wanted an election, and the turnout could be even worse.

All of which elicits a kind of existential soul-searching for those passionate about Canadian democracy.

For a few, it’s a hard-fought battle to raise issues and prompt debate. Across the country there are a handful of understaffed organizations working at what they see to be the major challenges of Canadian democracy.

But unlike the popular refrain, apathy is not the problem, says Duff Conacher, founder of Democracy Watch, one of Canada’s best-known democratic reform groups.

“There are actually solid logical reasons why people have stopped voting.”

Historically, Canadians take to the polls at around 75 percent. With 5 percent of voters stuck working or occupied, and five percent genuinely apathetic or disengaged from society, about 90 percent is the best to expect.

So why did only 75 percent of voters used to cast ballots? Mainly because of safe ridings, says Conacher. “Because either way your vote is not really going to affect the outcome.”

Drop-in Turnout

Now things are worse.

Elections Canada has tracked voter turnout since Canada’s first election in 1867. The last six elections have shown a historic decline in voter turnout with the last election the lowest since Confederation with less only 58.8 percent of electors voting.

One study available on Election Canada’s website interviewed 960 non-voters and found that many said it was pointless to cast a ballot because it had little impact. They also had a low opinion of politics in general.

With a majority of ridings apparently safe, and a lack of faith that politicians will do what they promise, voters don’t see a rational reason to vote, Conacher argues.

“So we do have a broken system in those ways. People are just acting logically.”

Another culprit is our first-past-the-post system, he says.

A 2003 study by researchers at the University of Montreal found that countries with proportional representation—where some seats are awarded to parties based on the percentage of the national vote they received rather than how they fared on a riding-by-riding basis—had 5-6 more voters.

Conacher believes proportional representation (which would likely see the NDP and Greens benefit to the detriment of other parties) and an honesty-in-politics law to punish politicians who break campaign pledges would inspire voters by making the ballot matter.

And voters should forget about safe ridings, he said.

“You truly never know when your vote may count.”

That was certainly true for Conservative Rahim Jaffer, who lost his Edmonton riding to Linda Duncan of the NDP by 463 votes in 2008. Now Duncan holds the one orange splotch on an otherwise Tory blue province.

Conacher says if you don’t like any party, cast a spoiled ballot. It’s a civic duty to let politicians know they are getting it wrong and if you do cast a spoiled ballot, they know there is a voter they could have had.

“If you are not voting, you are not really relevant to them.”

<a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/DuffMar10lrg_medium.jpg"><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/DuffMar10lrg_medium.jpg" alt="Duff Conacher (Courtesy of Democracy Watch )" title="Duff Conacher (Courtesy of Democracy Watch )" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-124430"/></a>
Duff Conacher (Courtesy of Democracy Watch )

MPs Disappointed

Samara, a relatively new organization named for the tiny helicopter seeds that fall from elms and maple trees, is also scrutinizing Canada’s democracy.

The group has published three reports based on interviews from 65 MPs who were leaving office. The latest came out Monday and is making waves for uncovering how disappointed MPs are with the system.

MPs told Samara’s interviewers that they were embarrassed by the public displays of politics in the House of Commons, saying that little good comes from question period and other high-profile events.

“The reason they are concerned is they know that presents a really negative and disengaging face to Canadians,” says Samara co-founder Alison Loat.

While most people behave in public and act poorly when others aren’t watching, “politicians seem to be different,” adds Loat.

MPs said they did their best work in relatively ignored committees and behind-closed-doors caucus meetings.

But they didn’t just blame the system, they blamed themselves, most specifically their parties. They said they often didn’t understand legislation they were told how to vote on, and were disappointed with the opaque nature of leadership decisions that ran counter to their own hopes to do democracy better, the reason many ran for office.

But despite all that, Canadians need to stay upbeat about their democracy, warns Loat. “People like to be drawn to a story that is a bit hopeful,” she says.

If people think Parliament is broken, they are more likely to disengage, and what Canada most needs is an active citizenry to rejuvenate its democracy.

“I think we do have a really good democracy on the whole, when you measure ourselves in international comparisons,” she says.

Unfortunately, nobody ever writes a news story about how many people didn’t get into a car accident, goes an old newsroom adage. Instead, what we most hear about are the disagreements, scandals, and unresolved legislative hurdles.

“Some of that is very good, because of course you don’t want to get complacent about the fact we live in a great democracy ... but the risk is we don’t focus on emphasizing what is working well, what we want to preserve,” says Loat.

Citizen Participation

While the system does work in that it generally responds to what the citizenry wants, that core function of democracy is often lost in the sweeping criticism levelled at politicians.

“That is the truth about democracy—it requires citizen participation to renew itself,” she says.

If the actions of politicians are leading people to disengage, that needs to be understood and illuminated.

“It is all of our jobs to make it better and keep it on the path it is on. It might sound idealistic, but I really do think we are lucky to have what we have.”

University of British Columbia political science professor Richard Johnston, an award-winning academic and author, has done some of the most in-depth election analysis in Canada. Currently the Canada Research Chair in Public Opinion, Elections, and Representation, Johnston says it is hard to fix the turnout problem, because it isn’t clearly understood.

“The truth of the matter is we still don’t have a very good understanding of the drops in turnout.”

He agrees with Conacher that safe ridings are partly to blame, but says that since 1994, many ridings have become more competitive but without a subsequent rise in turnout.

While he agrees with the popular refrain that cynicism is keeping voters away, he doesn’t think it is because of negative campaign messaging, a popular theory. Campaigns are no more negative now than they ever have been, he says.

“It is a bit of myth that they have become more negative.”

But like Conacher and Loat, he’s concerned.

“I think we should be worried about it. Democracy is a precious thing and it is not good when millions of people abandon the quest.”

Our 75 percent turnout may not have been as high as in Europe, but now we are lower than U.S. Presidential elections.

“It can’t be a sign of civic health, there has to be a problem. I just wish I could put my finger on it.”

He also agrees that mudslinging in Parliament is turning people off.

“The tone of Parliament is more negative than it needs to be. Among Parliaments of the world it is a strikingly negative and contentless place.”

He says one only need watch question period in the United Kingdom to see how much better things could be done.