Examining Voter Turnout in Canada: The Case for Electoral Reform

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments for students. This essay analyzes Canada's electoral system and the need for reform.

ESSAY TOPIC

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................. 3
MAIN BODY....................................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................. 9
REFERENCES.................................................................................................................................10
1

List of Figures
Figure 1: Voters' Participation in the Canadian electoral system from 1867-2015........................5
2

INTRODUCTION
An electoral system is a procedure to successfully conduction of the elections so as to
determine the political results in an effective manner. It includes all the aspect of the voting
process and is defined by the electoral laws as per the constitution of the given country. The
given study has been conducted to identify the reasons behind the failing level of the voter's
participation in the election with the case of the Canadian electoral system at the forefront.
Furthermore, the study would assess whether the application of the alternate form of the
election such as proportional representation would improve the voter's participation. At last,
there would be a discussion about the pros and cons of implementing the electoral system
reforms in pretext to Canada in an effective manner.
3

MAIN BODY
As per the studies of Mintz et al. (2012), most of the countries across the globe are democratic
in nature so as to provide a free and fair choice of electing their representatives. For ensuring
meaningful competition in politics, all the citizens are entitled to run in the elections and all the
political parties have the right to nominate the candidates as per their behalf. Furthermore, all
the people have the right to vote one person at a time to choose their suitable candidates as
per the universal suffrage. The elections are normally overseen by the independent commission
so as to conduct a fair election.
There are three types of electoral system prevalent across the globe and includes majoritarian,
proportional representation and mixed member proportional electoral systems. Majority of the
important nations across the globe including Canada follows single-member plurality (SMP)
majoritarian electoral system. According to this system, a simple procedure of voting is
followed so as to choose a representative from a particular area. In this system, not only
representative of a particular area is chosen, but a party is also chosen which could stake to
form the government (Samuels, 2017).
The major drawback of the SMP system is that it tends to transfer a number of votes received
by a party forming a government inaccurately into the seats it receives in the legislature. In
other cases, the SMP system allows a governing body to completely control the legislature so as
to deny formation of the effective opposition to the governing party. One such example in the
case of Canada is the winning of Liberals about 77 out of 79 seats from British Columbia with
only getting 57.6% votes.
Another drawback of SMP electoral system has been that it favours the most popular party
while ignoring smaller parties. Also, the parties which have wide support in specific
geographical regions tend to perform better than those parties which have a moderate
presence across the given country. Generally, those parties who have low support are unable to
get a good representation in the legislature. Therefore during the 2015 election campaign of
the Canada, Justin Trudeau that this would be the last federal election under the SMP system.
4

However, even after becoming PM of Canada, Trudeau has rejected to bring changes in the
electoral system so as to replace the present SMP system (Moser, et al. 2018).
Figure 1: Voters' Participation in the Canadian electoral system from 1867-2015
Source: [Segal and Broadbent 2018]
There has been a significant decrease in voter turnout in the federal election of Canada and has
reached to its lowest in 2008 when only 58.8% of the people cast their votes. Although this has
increased to 68.5% voting in 2015, still this percentage was small as compared to other
developed countries. There were various reasons provided by the people for not casting their
vote as per the survey conducted by Election Canada. According to it, they cited being too busy,
on vacation, family obligations and work schedule the reason behind not casting their vote
(Samuels, 2017).
However, the study of Elections Canada also revealed that the low voter turnout is mainly due
to the lower participation of the young generation between the age group of 18-25 in the
subsequent elections. The prime reason identified with low participation has been
disillusionment and low satisfaction from the government which has been governing the
country. Furthermore, these youngsters have become more political deficit with less knowledge
about the political procedures and low level of participation among the activities associated
with the democracy of the government (Mintz et al. 2012).
Some political pundits have identified that the present SMP system of election is also
responsible for low voter turnout. This is because the most popular party tends to lose the
election as even if they get a large number of votes, the party get more votes in a particular
5

region tends to perform better and thus are able to win more legislative seats than the main
party. Furthermore, there has been a significant and growing demand for people to get an
electoral reform so that their candidate would get proper representation and thus would be
able to solve their issues in a significant manner. In addition to this, some political experts have
also cited an increase in national debt; the low character of the political leaders and flaws in the
given democratic set-up of the government of Canada has resulted in low voters’ participation
in the election (Tremblay, 2019).
Kerevel et al (2019) have identified various solutions so as to mitigate these issues and ensure
higher voter turnout. The first step has been allowing an online mode of voting especially for
the youngsters as they would then be able to participate in voting in large number. Election
Canada has ensured that there has been the procedure of implementing online registration of
the voters so that it would be convenient for the voters to cast their votes in an effective
manner. Furthermore, the creation of awareness among the people related to the education
related to the election would help them to understand the procedure of voting and identify
their candidates in a better manner and thus enhance the voter participation in the future
election.
Another and most effective measure to improve voters’ participation in the electoral process is
the implementation of the electoral reform in the form of changing the electoral pattern from
SMP to proportional representation (PR) as SMP is unable to reflect the overall distribution of
the support for the political parties in the given election. In this type of election system, the
proportion of the seats obtained by the candidates in the legislature is the reflection of the
proportion of votes they have actually obtained in the given election. According to it, there is a
requirement of the selection of several representatives for each district. This would help in the
reflection of the voting pattern for each electorate in the legislature (Segal and Broadbent,
2018).
According to the studies of Evans and Kenny (2019), the voting system represents the heart of
any democracy which helps in the creation of the government which would work to provide
good services to the people. If the voting system tends to ignore the needs and aspiration of
6

the people, then the government would be responsible for that and results in compromising of
democracy. This the main problem of the political system of Canada which has been still
hobbled in the age-old voting system which needed to be scraped so as to pave way for new
voting procedure. Most of the citizens of Canada are concerned with the fair voting pattern in
the country and are persuading the government to bring urgent electoral reforms throughout
the country. The reason behind this is the current voting pattern of Canada which has been
based on the "winner-take-all principle" which indicates that one group of winner voters are
able to send their MP to the Parliament and other votes of other groups lay waste. Thus, these
are wastage votes which would yield nothing to the vote counts.
Norris (2019) agrees with Evans and Kenny (2019) and found that just 51`% of the voters in
Canada are able to elect an MP in an effective manner. The core concept of the voting principle
is to treat all the voters who have cast their votes equally and the given SMP system has been
unable to fulfil this condition appropriately. Due to SMP, the government of Canada has failed
to provide better representation to the people and created an illegitimate government which
claim majority by unfair mean and thus results in a decline in the voting pattern among the
young people. This is evident from the electoral history of Canada where since 1996; the party
coming second in the four provincial governments in the country has been able to form the
majority government. Furthermore, the present Canadian government has less representation
of the women and minorities which is significantly low as compared to the other developed
countries.
So, the alternative to the given faulty electoral system has been PR which has proved to be
beneficial in other countries and would be included in the upcoming three out of four provincial
elections in Canada. There are various benefits of the PR system such as it tends to reduces
wasted votes and distorted election results in the country, results in an increase in high voter
turnout and reflects better representatives in the Parliament. Furthermore, the PR system
would allow better composition of the electorate in terms of region, gender and ethnicity.
Besides, the parliament would maintain a strong economic performance and this provides more
satisfaction to the citizens of the country (Heine, 2019).
7

During the poll campaign, Trudeau’s Liberal party has promised to the citizens of the country
that if they get elected, they would eliminate the current voting pattern by the next federal
election in 2019. However, in 2017, the Trudeau had admitted that he has backfired the citizens
by scraping the promise to bring reform in the electoral system. However, there has been
growing resentment among the people and they are demanding an urgent electoral reform
before the next federal election (Tremblay, 2019).
As per the studies of Hall and Evans (2019), there are various benefits if the electoral reforms
are implemented at present. First is that it would make the electoral process more flexible and
would provide more choices to the voters to select representatives and would also provide
small parties to get represented in the Parliament. Secondly, it would make voters more
powerful as it would allow their voice to be heard in the Parliament more appropriately.
Thirdly, the election would favour more representation of the minority, women and aboriginal
candidates thus providing more opportunities to the downtrodden people and groups.
Edge (2018) has provided some drawbacks to this electoral reforms such as it would decrease
linkage and interaction between parties and voters. Moreover, there would be an increase in
complexity in the distribution of the seats which might affect the fairness of the electoral
procedure. Nevertheless, there would be more benefits than the drawbacks for the given study
and there would be a significant improvement in the election if the electoral reforms are
implemented immediately in the election process.
8

CONCLUSION
Thus the given study has shown that the election procedure is a heart of every democratic
government and helps in representing people in the Parliament. In the given study, there has
been a detailed description of the federal system of Canada which is based on faulty SMP and
has resulted in increased in wastage votes across the country. The given study has identified PR
system as the best alternative to the SMP system due to its reduction in wastage voters and
providing proper representation of the people in the Parliament of Canada irrespective of the
gender, region or ethnicity. Furthermore, there was also discussion about the Trudeau's Liberal
government and how it played with the sentiments of people by not implementing electoral
reform system. The study also highlighted the benefits and drawbacks of the electoral system
and found that it would help Canada to become better democratic country across the world.
9

REFERENCES
Baradat, P.L. and Phillips, J. A., 2017. Political Ideologies: Their Origins and Impact. Routledge.
Edge, B., 2018. A potential way forward on electoral reform in Canada. Journal of
Multidisciplinary Research at Trent, 1(1), pp.5-5.
Evans, E. and Kenny, M., 2019. The Women’s Equality Party: Emergence, Organisation and
Challenges. Political Studies.
Hall, P.A. and Evans, G., 2019. Representation Gaps: Changes in Popular Preferences and the
Structure of Partisan Competition in the Developed Democracies.
Heine, R., 2019. Electoral Systems and Women’s Political Representation: A Quantitative Case
Study of Female Legislators in Mexico’s Mixed Member Electoral System.
Kerevel, Y.P., Matthews, A.S. and Seki, K., 2019. Mixed-member electoral systems, best loser
rules, and the descriptive representation of women. Electoral Studies, 57, pp.153-162.
Mintz, E., Croci, O. and Close, D., 2012. Politics, power and the common good: An introduction
to political science. Pearson Canada.
Moser, R.G., Scheiner, E. and Stoll, H., 2018. Social Diversity, Electoral Systems, and the Party
System. The Oxford Handbook of Electoral Systems, p.135.
Norris, P., 2019. Silver or Lead? Why Violence and Corruption Limit Women’s Representation.
Samuels, J. D., 2017. Comparative Politics. Pearson.
Segal, H. and Broadbent, E., 2018. The evidence is clear. Canada needs electoral reform.
(Available Through: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-evidence-is-clear-
canada-needs-electoral-reform/. Accessed on 18th March, 2019)
Tremblay, A., 2019. Canadian Multiculturalism During the Harper Governments (2006–2015):
Diachronic Variance and the Importance of Electoral Outcomes. In Diversity in Decline? (pp. 81-
127). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
10