Voters Today: Not All Bad

Low voter turnouts may mean that more of the people who show are informed voters, but this isn’t necessarily the case—especially since only about 20% of the electorate “votes well” (that is, for the common good). And despite everybody freaking out, voter turnout today is not that much less than it has been historically since Confederation:

According to Elections Canada, voter turnout from 1867 to the present has hovered at approximately 70 per cent, but more recent elections have shown erosion from there. About 64 per cent of voters cast a ballot in 2006 and 58.8 per cent voted in 2008.

Voter turnout has actually been in decline since the 1980s, according to Elections Canada, but political scientists have only recently been able to verify this.

Voter turnout figures were based on calculating the number of votes cast against lists of eligible voters. The problem was that lists were sometimes incomplete, error-filled or non-existent. Voter turnout rates were calculated using incomplete data for decades after Confederation in 1867.

In 1997, the national registry of electors was developed, a permanent list that kept track of every eligible voter in Canada. For years until then, political scientists weren't sure whether the perceived downturn in voter turnout was more a myth than reality.

You know, I don’t understand why people persist in thinking that we’ve degenerated from the 1860s. I mean, in the 1860s we still didn’t have secret ballots (those weren’t around until 1874 for federal elections and even later for provincial ones), so you had to stand on the hustings and proclaim your vote, and you got heckled, and the candidates were sitting there watching you proclaim your vote, and people would try to bribe you and because it wasn’t a secret ballot they would know if you didn’t vote the way they wanted and come and beat you up after.

So… yeah. Voting: in better shape than the 1860s even if the voter turnout is about 10% lower.