Opinion: Federal voting reforms a good idea
Electoral reform is a touchy subject for Justin Trudeau. Prior to becoming prime minister, he promised that the 2015 election would be the last election conducted under the rules of Canada’s goofy, antiquated single-member plurality electoral system.
Two more elections have come and gone and SMP is still with us. Mention of Trudeau’s broken promise never fail to incense electoral reformers in organizations like Fair Vote Canada, who felt betrayed as a result. It’s an episode Trudeau would probably like us all to forget.
But, nevertheless, last week we learned that Trudeau’s Liberal government and its supply-and-confidence partner, Jagmeet Singh’s federal NDP, were hammering out an electoral reform deal that, while not doing away with SMP, would include various measures designed to improve access to the vote.
Winnipeg NDP MP Dan Blaikie laid out three items that are currently being discussed.
The first is to extend the length of time for which Canadians could vote from the current one day to three days.
Expanding the vote in this way could happen in a number of ways. The polls could be open for three days, including an entire weekend, and the times of day when they are open could be expanded. Or advance voting could be allowed in the days leading up to the election.
The second proposed reform is to allow voters to cast their ballots in any voting station in their constituencies, rather than limiting them to a single assigned station. As someone who has previously gone to the wrong voting station and been turned away by bemused staff, I’d personally appreciate this reform.
In fact, Elections Manitoba introduced this exact idea for the last provincial election. And during advance voting, Manitobans could vote at any advance poll in the entire province, not just in their seats.
Finally, the NDP and Liberals are discussing ways to increase access to mail-in ballots so people can vote from home prior to election day.
In general, I support any effort to increase engagement of voters with the democratic process. If these efforts boost voter turnout because people find it easier to vote, then that will give a shot in the arm to the legitimacy of our elections and other democratic institutions.
Elections Canada reports that voter turnout was 62.6 per cent in the last federal election. That is quite low by historical standards — only five other elections across the entirety of Canadian electoral history have had lower levels of turnout — but is hardly a cause for panic.
Still, it’s concerning that roughly 38 per cent of Canadians didn’t participate in the most basic democratic duty in the last election. If some small changes to the administration of elections could help raise that number, that would be a welcome development.
Would these changes make a difference? Maybe.
In particular, Canadians who work shifts or two or more part-time jobs will have new opportunities to cast their ballots. Between work and kids, many working-class Canadians struggle to make it to the polls. Even those intent on voting might, after an exhausting day, simply throw in the towel. Expanding access to the vote could help.
At the same time, it will be crucial that any attempts to fiddle with the administration of elections are done in such a way to ensure that public confidence is fully maintained. It will be imperative for governments, while opening up voting, to both prevent and crack down on any form of voting fraud.
South of the 49th parallel, the integrity of American elections has become increasingly politicized. Some of the decentralized practices for counting votes in U.S. states are downright clunky and a little weird. But politicians like former (and perhaps future) U.S. president Donald Trump have seized on these practices to indict the legitimacy of elections as a whole.
Concerns in particular about mail-in and advance voting have been raised. Many Americans believe that these new opportunities to vote are a scam designed to rig elections.
Governments in Canada have to do everything possible to avoid a similar shift in public views here in Canada.
Canadians and Manitobans tend to be very confident in our independent elections agencies like Elections Canada and Elections Manitoba.
In the Manitoba Election Survey conducted after the recent provincial election, for example, a strong majority of respondents reported being satisfied with the way Elections Manitoba had run the election. And a majority of Manitobans surveyed agreed that voting by mail was “equally as trustworthy as voting in person,” although quite a high number of respondents weren’t sure how to answer.
These findings should give us some confidence that the government can make changes to how elections are run without sparking concern among Canadians about ulterior motives on the part of those making the changes.
But Trudeau’s previous broken promise on electoral reform won’t help inspire public confidence in the reforms.
Royce Koop is a professor of political studies at the University of
Manitoba and academic director of the Centre for Social Science Research and Policy.
