Why Fix What Ain’t Broke?

As democracy watchers wring their hands over declining voter turnout, our federal government just made it harder to cast a ballot

Taking a page straight from the U.S. Republican Party’s playbook of dirty electioneering, legislation passed by Canadian parliament in 2007 will make it more difficult for citizens at society’s edges to cast ballots when the country goes to the polls on October 14.

Recent amendments to the Canada Elections Act under Bill C-31 will, among other things, require all voters to prove their identity and residential address prior to receiving a ballot at their polling station. For those with a fixed address and government-issued photo ID, the new law will be little more than a footnote on their day of democratic duty. But for those who live on the streets, senior citizens in residential care and anyone prone to a more transient lifestyle like students and low-income earners, Bill C-31 sets new hurdles to clear before being given the okay to exercise their constitutionally-enshrined right to vote.

Also swept away by the new legislation is the ability of a registered elector to vouch for the identity of an unlimited number of other registered electors. With the implementation of Bill C-31, one elector can now vouch only for the identity of one other elector in his or her polling precinct. That means individuals who used to swear an oath on behalf of groups of electors—say, an advocacy lawyer on behalf of a bloc of homeless voters—are out of luck.

Opponents of C-31 say those who control the levers of Canada’s electoral system should be working to make the democratic process less onerous, not more so, if the country’s declining turnout is to be reversed at a time when 35 percent of eligible voters stayed home during the last election in January 2006.

Bill C-31 was introduced by former Conservative democratic reform minister Rob Nicholson with the explanation that strengthening identification requirements would prevent manipulation of the electoral system. In a January 31, 2007, speech to parliament, Nicholson’s successor in the post, Peter Van Loan, told the House of Commons, “Addressing voter fraud is the core reason for Bill C-31. The potential for voter fraud hurts the integrity of our electoral system and undermines public confidence in the voting process. In fact, every time someone votes fraudulently, it undermines the legitimate say of every other voter. We all lose a little when that fraud takes place.”

There’s just one problem with Van Loan’s argument: the highest-ranking officials at Elections Canada have made repeated public statements that voter fraud is a negligible factor in the outcome of the country’s general elections.

Before a senate committee examining the ramifications of the proposed law on May 16, 2007, Canada’s chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand said, “I will not hide from you the perception that it is relatively easy to rig a vote. Today, and given all of the efforts to that end, all complaints are examined. For example, no later than last week, we published a report on the riding of Trinity-Spadina where there had been allegations of illegal votes. Having looked at the case of 11,000 voters who were registered on voting day, I can tell you today that not one single voter would have had the opportunity to vote twice. There have been inquiries in other ridings, and in each one of these cases, we were able to prove no systemic steps were taken to manipulate a vote.”

Mayrand told the same story when he again appeared before the senate standing committee on legal and constitutional affairs on May 30, 2007. Below is a short excerpt from a conversation between Senator George Baker and Mayrand.

Senator Baker: “You said there is no evidence of fraud. You have investigated it. Yet, one of the main purposes of this legislation, the principle of the bill, according to the committees, is to prevent voter fraud. Yet you claim there is no voter fraud.”

Mr. Mayrand: “There was no evidence of voter fraud when we investigated. Again, we are dealing very much with the perception of the rules of voting.”

Mayrand’s predecessor, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, drew the same conclusion when he said, “I have no evidence that would lead me to believe that there has been any fraud in this country, based on the testimony heard. I have no evidence.”

Given that investigations into allegations of voter fraud in Canada have turned up virtually no examples of willful manipulation at the ballot box, why would Canada follow the recent actions of Republican-dominated state legislatures in the U.S. that have passed laws that serve to impede certain traditionally Democratic supporters—read: blacks and recent immigrants—from making their voices heard at the polls?

University of Victoria political science professor Dennis Pilon has a few thoughts on the subject. He says legislation like Bill C-31 has little to do with fixing the electoral system and more to do with fixing the outcome of elections.

“I think what they’ve done is taken advantage of various political events where people are frightened—frightened of immigrants, frightened of terrorists, frightened of various wrongdoers—so we’ve got to tighten up security and this has become part of the security agenda,” he says. “But politically it is bad news. It definitely benefits the right over the left and arguably the right over the centre in terms of the Conservatives versus the Liberals. This is a political issue, not a real issue.”

Pilon adds it’s unsurprising that voter fraud has not been a feature in Canadian elections.

“There’s an aspect to this that really just hinges on common sense—to affect fraud to a degree that it would have an effect on the election outcome would be a pretty serious undertaking. You would have to coordinate hundreds of people to do this, which means you would have to keep them quiet, and it would be quite an amazing conspiracy.”

Bill C-31—with a subsequent amendment Bill C-18, which was brought forward after Elections Canada realized the original bill would disenfranchise approximately 1.5 million Canadian voters who have rural mailing, not residential addresses—received the support of the Conservatives, Liberals and Bloc Quebecois in the House. The NDP was the only party to vote against C-31.

Victoria NDP MP Denise Savoie spoke against the first draft of the bill in the House, which included a provision that would have granted political parties access to voters’ birth dates, a feature Savoie says would have been used for “crass political reasons” like sending out birthday cards as a way to score points with voters.

While the birth-date provision was nixed from the bill’s final incarnation, Savoie retains her doubts about the intent of the law.

“They talked about preserving the system from fraud, and I mean, we all want to do that, but in the face of what the chief electoral officer stated in committee, that is irrelevant.”

A recent paper from Columbia University political science professor Dr. Lorraine Minnite serves to debunk the myth—one echoed on this side of the border by the Harper Conservatives in their C-31 sales pitch—that voters in the U.S., under the instruction of shadowy operatives, regularly organize in attempt to manipulate the system.

From her findings, Minnite writes, “The claim that voter fraud threatens the integrity of American elections is itself a fraud. It is being used to persuade the public that deceitful and criminal voters are manipulating the electoral system. No available evidence suggests that voters are intentionally corrupting the electoral process, let alone in numbers that dilute and cancel out ‘the lawful votes of the vast majority of Americans.’”

In April, 2007, the New York Times reported that a Republican-dominated panel responsible for conducting election research played fast and loose with their researchers’ findings to inflate the perception about the prevalence of voter fraud in American elections.

Minnite continues in her paper, “The exaggerated fear of voter fraud has a long history of scuttling efforts to make voting easier and more inclusive, especially for marginalized groups in American society. With renewed partisan vigor, fantasies of fraud are being spun again to undo some of the progress America has made lowering barriers to the vote.”

Today these same fantasies are being spun on this side of the border, but the outcome will doubtless be the same for those already facing barriers to inclusion in mainstream society and politics.

However, a number of individuals and non-profit groups in British Columbia, including the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, want the law overturned on the grounds that it violates Section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which states, “Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein.”

Jim Quail, a staff lawyer at the BC Public Interest Advocacy Centre has taken on the case.

“In effect, [Bill C-31] creates a property qualification for the franchise in a broad sense, because you can no longer vote in a federal election in Canada if you do not have a residence, and in particular if you don’t have a residence that has an address attached to it,” he says.

Quail had hoped the case would reach the Supreme Court before the writ was dropped for the impending October general election, but now it won’t be headed for the courts until the next parliament takes its seat in Ottawa.

Quail dismisses any notion that the government’s rationale for introducing the law is grounded in an attempt to “strengthen the integrity of the electoral process,” as democratic reform minister Peter Van Loan repeatedly said as he tried to sell the bill.

“It’s really not a rationale, it’s more of a slogan,” says Quail. “They say that it’s to preserve the integrity of the electoral process, but the way our clients see it is that if you really want to destroy the integrity of the electoral process, the best way to do that is to deprive people of the right to vote.”

Quail says the grounds on which he will challenge the law are clear-cut. “It’s very simple,” he contends. “Section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms says everyone has the right to vote and the legislation creates obstacles to people exercising that right and it is therefore unconstitutional. So, the onus is on the government to justify the infringement on the Section 3 voting right. That will be a very difficult thing for them to do, I think.”

If all Canadian voters who think the new law could impede their ability to vote began making preparations now, the effect on voter turnout would be minimal. But for an electorate that’s apathetic at the best of times, the prospect of further barriers to casting a vote has many asking whether its worth disenfranchising hundreds, if not thousands, of voters in the hope of weeding out a handful of bad ballots. M

 

Poll Preparation

What voters should know when they go to the polls

More stringent identification requirements under Bill C-31 means gone are the days when you could waltz up to the polling station with only your voter identification card in hand. Now, you need to meet one of the following requirements on voting day:

• Provide one original piece of identification issued by any level of Canadian government or an agency of that government that contains the elector’s photo, name and residential address (in B.C. that means a drivers license or BCID card); or

• Provide two original pieces of identification from a list authorized by the chief electoral officer of Canada. Both must contain the name of the elector and one must also contain the elector’s residential address; or

• Be vouched for by an elector whose name appears on the list of electors in the same polling division and who has acceptable pieces of identification. Both will be required to make a sworn statement. An elector cannot vouch for more than one person, and the person being vouched for cannot vouch for another elector.

The list of identification and documents that have been authorized by the chief electoral officer can be found on Elections Canada’s website at elections.ca

—J.Y.