Blog /Box Checking

April 05, 2011 20:15 +0000  |  Democracy Politics 7

I got some heat from a few people today for what I said on Twitter and Facebook so I thought that I should clarify my position on it a bit. You see, I have a Big Problem with so much effort and rhetoric being poured into getting people to vote.

Now let me be clear: If you know what's going on, if you know what your options are, and you know what you think about what your candidates stand for, then by all means, I want you to vote... even if it's not for the party I'd prefer. My preference is for this country to be ruled by the collected will of the enlightened majority, and while democracy may be flawed, it's the best tool we've got for that.

But let me be clear again: If you do not know what's going on, what your options are, or who those people are who want your vote, I want you to figure that part out before you even think about voting.

Paul Martin was right when he said that there was a democratic deficit in this country, but I think it's time that we stop expecting these problems to be fixed from the top down and start looking in the mirror. Democracy is dependent on three things:

  • Free and fair elections
  • A free press
  • An informed electorate (dependent on a free press)

Now in Canada, we're pretty lucky to have some semblance of the first two. Complain all you want about our antiquated first-past-the-post system, as someone who's volunteered to work in a polling station, I can tell you that Elections Canada runs a clean ship. As for the press, well it has a lot of problems with consolidation, and this recent fiasco with a private consortium denying the Green voice in the debate should give anyone pause, but lets be honest, it could be worse.

But the informed electorate is where we need serious work, and it's from here that our governments derive this feeling that they can get away with anything... because they can. I have met transgendered people living on welfare in social housing who vote Conservative. I've heard about people who vote based on party colours, and there isn't an election that goes by that I'm not subjected to some idiot spouting something completely false to justify their vote for a party that works against her best interests. How many Canadians will vote in May not knowing (or caring) that our Prime Minister was found in contempt of parliament? How many will know why? Hockey games get more attention in Canada than the politics of running Canada does.

There's a democratic deficit in this country alright, but the low-hanging fruit here is in the electorate, not the government. Too many people don't want to talk about, read about, or even think about politics in Canada, and that's where we need to start: at the level of engagement, not at the end of the process.

These massive campaigns to "Rock the Vote" or some such nonsense work so hard to appear non-partisan and drive home only one message: that voting is cool, important, or even a responsibility... and it's all of those things, but only if that vote represents an informed citizen's opinion on how her country should function. They skip all that boring stuff because these campaigns are under the false impression that checking a box is the goal, and that democracy is simply the byproduct.

So yes, I know it's harder to sell, but can we please stop with this "get out and vote" business and instead try for something a little more thorough like: "it's your government, maybe you'd like to find out what's going on and take part?" I'll leave that to the marketing folk to figure out.

Comments

Melanie
6 Apr 2011, 3:36 a.m.  | 

There's nothing overtly wrong with what you're saying, except for your understand of what "get out and vote" means. When people push and encourage others to go vote, reminding them that it's a right and a responsibility, implicit in that message is that they should know what they're voting for. I guess because of your experience in canvasing, you're assuming that the majority of people are not knowledgeable, but I'm inclined to think that's more of the squeaky wheel getting the grease. I see a lot of ignorant students when I'm at work, but I'm pretty sure the majority of students know how to look up books. Same idea.

Even if you don't buy the idea that "rock the vote" means "make an informed decision", there's also the fact that the majority of voter turnout consists of middle-class white folks. The disenfranchised are typically poor voters, because they believe that their voices won't be heard. If you spend your whole life being pushed down and aside, you tend to feel powerless. Minorities and the poor are poor voters, not because they're ill-informed, but because they feel like there's no point in voting. Because of this, elections are more representative of the opinions of the white and the middle-class. The first step to changing that is to remind the poor, the oppressed, and the young, that their voice matters - that they have some measure of power.

Finally, again respecting the fact that you've had negative experiences in your time canvasing, there's something inherently offensive in the fact that you're assuming that most people don't know how to make informed decisions. Whatever reason a person has for deciding on their candidate, it's not really your place to decide that those reasons are invalid. That alone might be what is setting people off.

Melanie
6 Apr 2011, 3:37 a.m.  | 

ps: I love you.

Donna
6 Apr 2011, 9:20 a.m.  | 

In support of some of what Mel said, there was an article in the news here the other day saying that the electorates with the greatest number of blank or invalid votes also tend to be the poorest and/or with the highest percentage of immigrants. (I should look it up, I probably got that slightly wrong, but you get the point)

Remember that over here we have to vote. The fine is pretty small if you "forget", but most of the "there's no point in voting, they all suck and don't care about me" people tend to go for the "donkey vote" which is essentially showing up to get your name marked off, then either submitting a blank ballot or writing something offensive on it or whatever.

So over here, my problem is with people who think writing offensive things on the ballot instead of voting will achieve something. Since you're going to show up anyway, why not vote for an independent or small party? In our proportional system that actually does achieve something, because we get a few small parties/independents in the middle with the "balance of power" - the big parties need their vote to pass things, so they'll actually alter their policies for them - which generally makes them saner.

And, because voting is compulsory, we have "Rock Enroll" rather than "Rock the vote". It's the same everywhere.

PS - I'll be in Amsterdam 28-30th June.

Daniel
6 Apr 2011, 9:58 a.m.  | 

I'm not sure whose position that supports really, as it could be said that the "Rock Enroll" campaign managed to push these people to vote, but when they got there, they had nothing to say. I suppose it's better that they spoilt their ballots rather than voting blindly.

I guess a lot of this is coming from my experience working inside elections. We know that parties work like crazy on things like making sure they're in a debate (cough), the order in which they appear on the ballot, and even the shade of party colours used on their lawn signs. They make these efforts because they have significant impact and none of this should matter to the democratic process.

My interest here is in framing democracy as contributing to a legitimate government, rather than a box-checking exercise, because from what I've seen the current campaigns to promote voting aren't working.

Melanie, would you agree that the demographics you mentioned would be more likely to participate in their government if we did more than just tell them that voting is cool/important/responsible? I may not belong to any of those groups, but I would think that I would feel less powerless if I better understood the process and my options.

Donna, that's great news (the Amsterdam thing, not the donkey voting thing). I will be sure to have a guest bed in time to host you for as long as you like.

Donna
6 Apr 2011, 10:27 a.m.  | 

Well, I was making two separate points and not making that clear. The "Rock Enroll" thing is aimed at getting young people to vote, which is separate to the "poor people don't vote because they think no one cares" argument.

The order they appear on ballots here is random, and possibly there's multiple versions but I'm not sure on that.

In general though, I totally agree - more people should make informed votes.

The problem here is that people think they're informed because they're voting based on the issues that get media attention and they believe lies and exaggeration. In the end, they're not really making informed decisions, they're generally voting based on scare campaigns. Like "if you vote Labor [left] interest rates will go up!" - despite the reserve bank (who set the rates) saying it won't make any difference since they're going up anyway, people still voted entirely based on that scare campaign (and Labor lost). And the interest rates went back up anyway.

Lara
6 Apr 2011, 11:11 a.m.  | 

A country is always going to have uninformed voters. If your issue is with ignorant people voting, then it seems to me that your issue is with the democratic process itself. Should we also start a campaign to keep dumb voters at home?

I'm being facetious, obviously. But I maintain what I said previously. Encouraging people to vote and reminding them that there's an election coming up *is* a call to get informed, with a deadline. Now, I do make an effort to help people get informed about issues that I feel are relevant whenever an election comes around, but I will continue to encourage people to vote, because for me, making the decision to get out and vote was exactly the motivation I needed to start paying attention to how my country, province, and city were being run. Similarly, when I know I've got an exam, it's an incentive to start studying.

Daniel
27 Apr 2011, 2:10 p.m.  | 

Lara, you're approaching this subject from the point of view of a responsible person wanting to (a) engage in her own government and (b) do so with as great an understanding as you can acquire. What I'm saying is that while your position is wonderful, the facts tell us that too few people do the same.

Just look at the voting records -- at any level really: federal, provincial, even municipal. While the majority of the voting public is in the lower and middle economic classes, parties with a platform (or past actions) resembling an agenda that benefits the upper classes are elected. In other words, in a country of people living paycheque to paycheque, the Conservatives and Liberals usually take power and screw the majority.

If most Canadians were, as Melanie suggests, knowledgeable and engaged in what's going on in this country, then this could not be the case. With their popular support in this election reaching 40%, the Conservatives are picking up votes from at least 7million people who stand to be (or already have been) burned by their policies. When you factor in the Liberal's past record on similar issues, that number jumps to nearly 12million.

So based on votes cast alone, with no anecdotal evidence involved, nearly half of the electorate cast their votes in favour of a party that has promised to screw them, or has already done so recently. It's with this in mind that I post about things like this, because while in some cases (Lara), pushing people to vote was enough to get them engaged, it's clearly not enough for a significant portion of our country.

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