The Liberals are in the mid-30s in the polls, the Tories a couple of points behind. But if recent elections are any guide, 40 per cent or more of eligible voters will choose not to vote at all. Factor in the no-shows, and you can win a “majority” government in this country with the support of as little as 22 per cent of the electorate.
Turnout has been falling for some time: from an average of roughly 75 per cent in the six federal elections after 1945, to an average of just over 60 per cent in the last six. Of course, it’s always possible this election may reverse the trend. It’s a close race, and the Conservatives are the kind of government that excites strong feelings both for and against. Advance polls, for what it’s worth, are reporting long lineups. But even if turnout were to rise to, say, 66 per cent — the highest since 1997 — that would still mean one in three voters couldn’t be bothered.
To some, this is untroubling. If voters are choosing not to vote, that’s a kind of vote isn’t it? Maybe they’re too satisfied with their lot to care who governs them. Maybe they find all the choices so enticing that they’re paralyzed with indecision. Surely falling turnout, these bold contrarians maintain, is actually a sign of the ruddy health of our democracy.
I’m not quite sure how they know this. The research I’ve seen indicates the opposite: voters don’t vote, they tell opinion surveys, because they think the parties are all the same, or because all politicians are liars, or because they don’t think their vote will change anything.
But never mind. Whatever the reason people don’t vote in such numbers, it is enough to know that they don’t. Because when turnout is this low and variable, it results in what statisticians would call an unrepresentative sample. The propensity to vote, after all, is not evenly or randomly distributed throughout the population. Young people are less likely to vote than older. Poor people are less likely to vote than richer. Non-whites are less likely to vote than whites. And so on.
If we care about the democratic ideal, then — one person, one vote — and if we want governments that govern on behalf of all the people, not just some of them, raising turnout ought to be an urgent national priority. I’ve written in favour of mandatory voting — a concept requiring more space to explain than I have here — on other occasions. But for now a couple of ideas that might make voting more attractive:
• Tone down the vitriol. It’s been said many times, and it’s worth saying again: if private businesses attacked each other with the vehemence and regularity that political parties do — if airlines ran ads suggesting their rivals’ planes were unsafe, or soup companies implied their competitors’ products might contain lead — none of them would be in business for long.
Of course, there’s a bit of a collective action problem here. One reason the parties are so wedded to attack ads is that their strategies depend not just on getting their own partisans out to vote, but on so depressing other parties’ supporters that they stay home. And if everyone’s strategy works too well, and hardly anybody votes? No matter. As long as more of ours did than theirs.
• Punish political lies. Or rather, reward political honesty. Again, the comparison is with the private sector, where product claims are subject to truth in advertising laws and securities regulations prohibit issuing false or misleading prospectuses.
Of course, politics is different in some ways: chief executives do not have to endure rival operatives following them around all day long recording their every utterance, as political candidates do. And no one wants some sort of truth police catching politicians out for every slip of the lip.
But we need to do something. Politics in recent times has strayed far beyond the entertaining fibs and genteel fictions of old into outright larceny, with parties, once in power, enacting the very policies they had solemnly forsworn to persuade the people to put them there. The problem isn’t so much that liars are prospering, as that nobody believes any of them any more — even the honest ones.
What do people in the private sector do to establish their bona fides, in fields full of sharp operators? They swear out affidavits, post bonds, offer money-back guarantees. Perhaps this concept can be adapted to politics.
• Fix the electoral system. First-past-the-post has many flaws, but chief among them is to make the vote more or less meaningless for many people. If you live in a so-called safe seat, there’s little point in turning out. If you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who vote for one of the smaller parties, like the Greens, you can forget about having any voice.
Indeed, if you vote for anyone in any seat other than the winning party, you might as well not bother: your vote will have no impact on the result. Finally, if you are caught in the strategic voting vise — told you cannot vote for the party you prefer, but must vote for some other party you’re not keen on to keep yet a third party out — you will feel less than enthused about the franchise.
Proportional representation systems, by contrast, ensure that every vote counts, and every vote counts equally. To the extent they rely on voters’ second and third choices moreover, they discourage the sort of nastiness I mentioned above: the game becomes how to win over other parties’ supporters rather than just rile up your own. It won’t guarantee higher turnouts, but it can’t hurt.
Original Article
Source: news.nationalpost.com/
Author: Andrew Coyne
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