In the News May 29

Ontario Election 2022

History of Voter Turnout in Ontario

– Anna Di Carlo –

The greatest myth in Canada is that through elections, the people, referred to as an electorate, “choose” the government in a process which authorizes said government to rule over them. This is in fact not the case.

The process is designed to bring elites to power which, despite being called representatives of the people, represent private interests which act behind the people’s backs. It is said to be a system of majority rule but how the word majority is defined merely refers to how votes are counted. How candidates are picked, who decides the agenda of party governments and other matters which go to the heart of what constitutes “the rule” itself, are not part of this “majority” idea at all.

In the June 2018 Ontario Election, there were 10,246,066 registered electors. Only 5.8 million chose to vote, 56.7 per cent of those registered. Elections Ontario calculates the turnout based on valid votes cast which put it at 56.07 per cent. In that election, more than one per cent of the ballots (61,426) were either “unmarked, rejected, or declined.”

The lowest voter turnout ever was in the October 2011 election when only 48.2 per cent of those registered to vote went to the polls. Of the nine million registered voters, only 4.3 million cast a validated vote.

The first provincial election, held on September 3, 1867 saw 173 candidates competing for 82 seats. Only propertied (land-holding) men over the age of 21 were entitled by law to vote, not by ballot, but by show of hands. Of the 215,722 people on the list of electors, turnout was 73.9 per cent. Six of the ridings did not hold polls because the candidates were acclaimed.

Open voting (voting by show of hands) was last used in the March 1871 election. There were 159 candidates competing for 82 seats. Fifteen of them were acclaimed. The registered voters dropped to 207,717 people and only 62.93 per cent of them attended the open polls which were held at 1,367 locations.

In the 15th general election of October held in 1919, some women were entitled by law to vote for the first time. This was limited to female British subjects over the age of 21. This effectively doubled the number of electors and the election saw the highest turnout ever in the province’s history. There were 1,443,746 registered voters and 1,234,765 turned out, translating to 85.5 per cent of the registered electorate. That election also saw the highest percentage ever of rejected, declined and/or unmarked ballots, almost 51,000, or 4.3 per cent of the ballots cast. There were 111 electoral districts at the time and 288 candidates competed for the seats.

The attempt to increase voter turnout is one of many signs of perseveration — attempts to make a discredited elitist party-dominated system of representation work.

Elections Ontario campaigns to increase voter turnout by appealing to electors to exercise their civic and social responsibility are falling flat given the contempt in which the electorate is held by the cartel parties who pay the people no heed whatsoever. People are fed up with a political process dominated by an elitist cartel of parties that have no concern whatsoever for the duty of government to be socially responsible. Attempts to increase voter turnout are doomed because the problem lies in the failure of the political and electoral process, rooted in the abuse of power and the exercise of privilege over the electorate.

Attempts to break the stranglehold over power by self-serving interests organized as political parties are seen in the fact that, over time, the number of people who decide to stand as candidates either for small parties or as independents has grown. It is an indicator of people seeking to break the domination of the polity by the cartel of self-serving, state-funded parties.

The 21st Ontario election in August 1943 was the first where the average number of candidates per riding reached three. By the 37th general election, held in June 1995, the average reached five candidates in each riding. In 2018, the average reached almost seven per riding. In this election 900 candidates put themselves forward in 124 ridings, an average of more than seven per riding surpassing the average in 2018. Many independent candidates in this election have registered with the specific aim of challenging the party-dominated system from various perspectives.

(Office of the National Leader)

Ontario Political Forum, posted May 29, 2022.