With regards to voter turnout, this was an excellent artice from Sunday's Star. Apologies if it's already been posted.
What really counts
Nov. 12, 2006. 01:00 AM
KENNETH KIDD
"If despotism failed only for want of a capable, benevolent despot, what chance has democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters?"
— George Bernard Shaw
Sometime tomorrow night, and certainly by the following day, there will be a chorus of commentators lamenting the low turnout in Monday's municipal election.
And low it will be. If the past is any guide, fewer than 40 per cent of registered voters are apt to cast ballots in electing Toronto's mayor and councillors. So even if David Miller cruises to re-election with, say, 50 per cent of the votes cast, only one in five eligible voters will have supported him — hardly a stellar endorsement.
There will follow much hand-wringing, along with anguished cries about how, at both the federal and provincial levels, voter turnout has been similarly low and tumbling of late.
Such a huge number of non-voters will, in turn, be said to reveal the dark cynicism of Canadians, our rank indifference, or the severing of traditional community bonds. Even the legitimacy of governments themselves will get called into question, given how few of us actually vote for those in power.
We'll look for apparent solutions, of course, such as making it easier for people to vote — or at least less inconvenient — perhaps by casting ballots via the Internet, as Peterborough is trying in its municipal election.
But what if the assumptions that prompt our concerns about low turnout aren't as solid as we think?
What if it's actually a good thing that some people don't vote? Would it really be better if people who know little or nothing about the issues still showed up to cast a random vote?
And what if, by fixating on overall turnout, we're losing sight of, not just the bigger picture, but potentially more vexing problems down the road?
The reported drop in voter turnout may, in fact, exaggerate the current reality.
Consider what has ostensibly happened in federal elections since the mid-'60s. With one exception (1980), turnout was above 70 per cent of registered voters — until 1993, when it dipped south of that level, then hit a low of 61 per cent in 2004.
"How come that's all of a sudden happened?" asks Nelson Wiseman, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. "My theory is that a lot of it has to do with the inadequacies of the voters' lists."
It used to be that, in the weeks before an election, there would be a whole new enumeration to create the voters' list, with officials going door-to-door across the country. That made for a voters' list that was both timely and as accurate as possible.
Now we use a so-called permanent list. First tested in the 1993 federal election, some version of a permanent list is now the norm for elections at all levels. The rationale is cost. The tab for enumerating door-to-door in a federal election was about $30 million. On the surface, simply updating an existing list seems cheaper and more efficient.
But here's the real problem with a permanent list: It's prone to errors and duplication that artificially increase the reported number of registered voters. In Toronto, for instance, one in five households moves every year, so you, dear reader, could end up on the voters' list more than once. That's why so many of us find our mailboxes filled with election cards addressed to somebody else.
"All of those people who don't live at those addresses are on the list," says Wiseman. "If you've got a huge, inflated, bloated list of people that are dead or don't live there, yeah, it looks like voter turnout is going down."
During the last municipal election, Wiseman himself was listed twice for the same poll. He'd moved apartments within the same building. But the voters' list — based in this case on the database of property owners and tenants at the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation — didn't reflect that.
If he hadn't alerted the authorities, the reported voter turnout of Nelson Wisemans would have been a dismal 50 per cent.
Elections Canada, which oversees the national list, has moved to correct some of these problems, in part by working more closely with the likes of Canada Post and provincial licensing bodies to avoid duplication.
But, as last year's auditor general's report concludes, "significant challenges" remain. Nationally, about 17 per cent of voter information changes every year, including such things as the addition of newly eligible voters, deaths and changes of address. By relying on multiple, outside sources of information, Elections Canada runs the risk of receiving incomplete or conflicting information about the same person.
There are also time lags involved. If you move, it may take you a while before you change the address on your driver's licence, and then a further delay between then and when the Ministry of Transportation sends this information along to Elections Canada.
The other problem: A driver's licence may say you're 18, but it doesn't confirm citizenship.
No one has yet done an exhaustive study of how much the permanent list might stray from the real world. And Jean-Pierre Kingsley, the country's chief electoral officer, was unavailable for an interview last week.
But the permanent list does seem problematic. True, there are people who ought to be on it who aren't, such as those who have only recently become citizens or attained voting age. Most, however, will probably crop up on the list at some point, courtesy of provincial and other databases. And if they themselves go to the trouble of getting on the list, chances are they'll vote.
So the real concern is an inflated list, which automatically reduces the turnout as a percentage of registered voters.
Even Elections Canada has made adjustments after the fact. In the 1993 federal election, for instance, voter turnout was originally reported as 69.6 per cent. But there was no enumeration for that election, except in Quebec. Everywhere else, the voting list from the 1992 referendum on the Charlottetown Accord was simply re-used.
The election agency later went through the referendum list and removed people who were by then known to have died or moved in the interim. That alone boosted voter turnout to almost 71 per cent.
Similar revisions after the 2000 election produced an even greater change: turnout rose to 64.1 per cent from 61.2 per cent.
Enumeration has a further advantage. When someone knocks at your door, you're faced with a human reminder that an election is under way. In the wake of that encounter, at least some of us might be more likely to head to the polls than if we only get a chit from Elections Canada mixed in with all the junk mail. Or we get a chit addressed to someone else.
So, has overall turnout really tanked?
After this year's federal election, the turnout was reported to be 65 per cent. Assuming enumeration would add two or three points to that total, you'd end up with a number much closer to the historical norm.
In the 39 federal elections since 1867, voter turnout has only been at or above 70 per cent on 25 occasions. And while it did approach 80 per cent from the late 1950s through the mid-1960s, the average turnout since Confederation is just a shade over 71 per cent.
But even if we accept that turnout has been falling — or that it's demonstrably abysmal in municipal elections — is this by itself cause for alarm?
To Western minds, the act of voting has long been freighted with meaning. Back when Aristotle was explaining Athenian democracy to the world, voting and debating were the essence of citizenship. Or, as Aristotle put it: "He who enjoys the right of sharing in deliberative or judicial office thereby attains the status of a citizen."
It may have been an elitist form of democracy — the young, the old, women and slaves were all excluded — but the majestic connection between voting and citizenship has remained with us ever since.
We think of them as reflecting and reinforcing one another, as when Thomas Paine, one of the intellectual figures behind the American Revolution, remarked: "The right of voting for representation is the primary right by which other rights are protected."
But consider this: How many of us will admit that we've cast our ballots on at least one occasion without really knowing as much as we should about the issues and the candidates? Have we ever voted on a gut instinct rather than an intelligent weighing of the facts?
We've exercised our right to vote but we've abandoned the attendant responsibility to be sufficiently informed. Might there be times when not voting is the more rational choice?
We can, of course, decide that our vote won't make any real difference — an argument that has some resonance at the municipal level, notes Neil Thomlinson, chair of politics and public administration at Ryerson University.
"No matter who wins," he says, "the garbage is still going to be collected, the TTC is going to run, potholes are going to get fixed occasionally, traffic lights are going to work, Toronto Hydro is going to gurgle on."
In the absence of party politics at the municipal level, no single candidate can really claim that he or she will implement a citywide vision on the big issues, like waterfront renewal or expanding public transit. At the end of the day, even the mayor is just one vote on council.
"It's as if the local politician is campaigning for office based on whether there should be a stop sign placed at the intersection of 34th and Vine," says Thomlinson. "The citizen who doesn't care about that stop sign is really left with nothing, no real way of expressing their view on the big issues."
In other words, the structure of municipal government in a city the size of Toronto is preventing voters from having a meaningful voice on the larger issues — and they know it. So which is the real problem?
Or consider Wiseman's somewhat contrarian view, that the presence of so many non-voters at all levels of governance reflects a fairly contented populace, despite what we sometimes tell pollsters when asked to complain.
As he puts it: "Lower voter turnout might indicate a wealthy, privileged society like ours. Civil society is so strong that, when all is said and done, if a Harper gets elected, a Layton gets elected or a Martin gets elected, things don't change that much."
When we do see high turnouts, it's usually during some sort of crisis, such as the 1995 Quebec referendum, when 92 per cent showed up. In Iraq, more than 70 per cent risked their lives to endorse a new constitution.
Another problem with focusing on turnout alone is that it simply measures how many of us have cast ballots but says nothing about how much we've pondered the issues or the quality of the choices we've made. And it may be a recognition of the latter that prompts so many of us to stay away from the polls.
A decade ago, two American economists — Timothy Feddersen and Wolfgang Pesendorfer — argued that the decision not to vote was related to another phenomenon called "roll off."
Roll off occurs when people skip some items on the ballot, and the 1994 election in Illinois provided a ready example. Of the 6.1 million registered voters, only 3.1 million bothered to cast a vote for governor, but even fewer — 2.1 million — voted on a proposed amendment to the state constitution.
As economists, Feddersen and Pesendorfer used a swirl of mathematical proofs to make their argument, but the implication was clear. Those who skipped the constitutional question, which was actually listed first on the ballot, did so because they didn't feel confident enough in their knowledge to make a decision.
Instead, they deferred to the judgment of other voters, just as people either consciously or unconsciously do when they choose not to vote at all. Because educated and wealthy people are more likely to vote than their opposites, non-voters as a group are effectively deferring to those with more money or education.
If you think that's a good thing, of course, you're apt to be labelled "an elitist swine," says Thomlinson. "But I have a lot of sympathy with that position personally, because I don't think democracy is really about empowering ignorance.
"One of the fundamental precepts of democracy is that you have an informed and engaged citizenry. You wouldn't get much argument from anybody that we really do have that. People don't even understand the system very well, much less understand the issues."
So is concentrating on voter turnout, per se, the right approach? Do we really want people to cast a vote, any vote, just to get the number as high as possible?
In recent years, there has been a growing belief that high levels of civic and social interaction are what translate into a higher turnout at the polls. If you belong to anything from bridge clubs and bowling leagues to parent-teacher associations, you're far more likely to vote.
That was certainly the conclusion reached by Harvard professor Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone, which gave new life to the term "social capital." By joining these kinds of community groups, we build up goodwill and sympathy toward our fellow citizens — or social capital.
In the last few decades, Americans have stopped joining these kinds of organizations in anything like their previous numbers, at the same time that voter turnout has stagnated.
That's one reason the eyes of commentators so often alight on voter turnout. "In a way, you can regard a low voting turnout as a symptom of a more general syndrome of turning away from social and political participation," says Jon Pammett, a professor of political science at Carleton University.
In the end, he says, you risk "a qualitative decline" in all sorts of interactions between people and their government. It starts to get ugly out there.
But if it's true that engaged citizens tend to vote, is it equally true that if you get people to vote, they'll become active in their communities in other ways?
Even Putnam isn't sure. In fact, he notes, voting and following politics are not themselves forms of social capital, since you can do either one completely alone.
The most troubling development, as both he and Pammett point out, may be one below the surface of overall turnout.
In a study three years ago, Pammett found that less than two-thirds of those who reached voting age between 1974 and 1980 bothered to cast a ballot in the 2000 election. For each subsequent cohort, the decline in participation accelerated dramatically. By the time you get to those who first joined the electorate in 1997, only 22.4 per cent of them went to the voting booth in 2000.
Tom Axworthy, chair of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Queen's University, thinks the big reason for that decline is the relative collapse of history and civics in the public school curriculum, beginning around 1970. Throw in budget cutting, which has slashed extra-curricular activities, and you've also got an assault on the early building of social capital.
"In order to vote, you have to have a sense of civic competence," says Axworthy. "You have to feel that you know something about the issue, just as when you go to buy a television, you feel you have to know something about whether Panasonic is better than Sony."
But today's first-time voters are often woefully lacking in that kind of competence, something Thomlinson encounters every day in the classroom.
"I teach students who are just half-an-inch out of that [16-18 year-old] range, and let me tell you, if you think adults are cynical and bitter about politics, they don't even hold a candle to what many younger people think about it."
Yet it's a cynicism divorced from both knowledge and experience.
"You're supposed to get cynical after you've been bitten by the system, and after you've taken the trouble to understand the system and realize its shortcomings," says Thomlinson. "Everybody has the right to be cynical, but don't let cynicism just mask ignorance.
"To be cynical without understanding is a nonsensical proposition, but I'm here to tell you it's very common."
