In the News June 7

Results of the June 2 Ontario Election

Low Voter Turnout and the State of Canadian Democracy

A lot is being said about low voter turnout being “bad” for Canadian democracy. There is no doubt about that! It contributes to the lack of credibility and legitimacy of what are called the liberal democratic institutions when a government is brought to power on the basis of a percentage of the electorate which is so small it is not perceived to confer a mandate from the electorate. When it is a majority government elected with barely 18 per cent of the electorate having voted for it, as in the case of the current Ford government, it is problematic indeed.

Just over a decade ago, on the heels of the 2008 federal election where turnout dropped to just below 60 per cent, an article was published by the University of Toronto during the 2011 federal election which warned that voter participation could reach a new low of 57 per cent. The article quoted former Chief Electoral Officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley who said that “declining turnout warrants action because it puts the legitimacy of Canada’s electoral outcomes and its democracy at stake.”

“What will happen if we ever reach 50 per cent?” he questioned. “We simply have to understand why something as vital as electoral democracy all of sudden, inside a generation, is evaporating.”

When Premier Ford was asked by a reporter about the impact of the voter turnout on his claim to a mandate following this Ontario election, he answered, “It’s pretty clear the people gave us a mandate with 83 seats and we’re going to focus on our mandate.” He dismissed demands to reform how votes are counted in favour of a system of proportional representation, saying the first-past-the-post method of counting votes has worked “for over 100 and some odd years,” and “it’s going to continue to work that way.”

Many theories have been advanced over the years as to why voter turnout has declined since 1990. The excuse most often proferred is “political apathy of the youth.” This has become a routine accusation since voter turnout among 18-24 year-olds was recorded at only 37 per cent in the 2008 federal election. However it explains nothing because the generation of youth referred to is anything but apathetic when it comes to fighting against the anti-social offensive, injustice, damage to the natural environment, racist discrimination, inequality and war. The examples of their participation in opposing the G7 and G20 Summits in Toronto, even as the view was being given that they were apathetic, debunked that theory.

Evidence of why so many people have stopped voting points to the problem that the political process is dominated by cartel parties. These parties perpetuate a system of cartel party governments which rule by decree and operate a revolving door in which ministers, advisors, high level civil servants and the like switch back and forth between their government jobs and high level jobs in private industry. Very self-serving conflict of interest rules facilitate what normal people understand as conflict of interest.

There is also plenty of evidence that the cartel parties aim for very carefully calculated numbers of votes in specific ridings, basing their work on huge databases that indicate who is most likely to cast a ballot for them or for a rival candidate or which issues constituents support which should become buzzwords in a campaign. In fact, because micro-targeting works best when there is a low voter turnout, of “known entities” and no wild cards, evidence points to attempts to not get a higher voter turnout. The larger the voter turnout the more difficult it is for micro-targeting to work.

Alongside this is voter suppression that occurs when election campaigning is no longer a public event but a one-on-one relationship with specific potential voters through Facebook and the like. This gives rise to an overall suppression of the people’s participation in political affairs that is deliberately fostered by the electoral laws. Voter suppression has taken the form of legislation that reduces the concerns and interventions of anyone but the parties already empowered to “third parties” that have to register with the state as “advertisers” to be permitted to “target” electors with their “message.” Meanwhile unions and other organizations have been blocked from using resources to directly assist candidates or parties they support. The rich nonetheless use their control over the media and domination of the parties with seats in the previous legislature to dictate the agenda for the next government and what are called election issues which they attribute to “voters.” Only the cartel parties and candidates are permitted into official debates which access a collective audience. Everything else is suppressed or silenced.

What this all shows is that far from elections being a mechanism where the people can participate in discussion and deliberation as to what is needed and then express a clear and coherent political will in the form of a government selected by themselves on the basis of a mandate they themselves provide, elections have become exercises in suppression of the electorate in various ways. This is what the province-wide voter turnout of 43.5 per cent in the recent June 2 election reflects. The people are rejecting the state of affairs where they have no say whatsoever over any part of the process except casting a ballot. It is a very serious crisis for the rulers as the more they suppress the electorate in various ways, the less they can claim any mandate at all or legitimacy for their pay-the-rich schemes which go hand in hand with criminalizing people’s resistance to this agenda.

Ontario Political Forum, posted June 7, 2022.