Double Blind

Our Chief Electoral Officer (Harry Neufeld) wrote an article in the Vancouver Sun about how the rate of eligible voters to those that actually vote has been declining over the past few elections (from 70% in 1983 to 55% in 2001).

The media usually likes to say that a lack of voter turnout is a sign that the public is disinterested in democracy or they raise issues whether mandatory voting should be instituted. They imply that a lack of voter turnout is bad. My opinion is that the choice whether to vote should continue to be a freedom. The media has been getting it completely incorrect.

It is in any voter’s best interests to encourage those around him not to vote in elections, especially in the case where those other voters will not vote for the selection of the first voter’s choice. The reason is because each individual vote becomes stronger with less votes. Ideally, I would like to be the only person voting in my constituency, because then I will be guaranteed my represented voice in the legislature (although it should be pointed out that if this person is anything other than in cabinet, the power they can wield is very limited).

Taking a look at the 2001 results in my riding, Richmond-Centre, we had 36580 eligible voters, 24495 that were registered, and 16969 that actually did vote (46%). So I had a 0.0059% say on who would be the next MLA for the riding. 0.0059% does not seem like a big number, but if you think in terms of money, if I owned 0.0059% of Apple, I would own $2.1 million worth of its stock.

The reason why the overall turnout in Richmond-Centre was so low was because our riding was a guaranteed BC Liberal seat – the BC Liberals and Social Credit parties have been taking all of Richmond for the last 50 years, so unfortunately we’re taken for granted. This is another reason why I support BC-STV – the individuals within the party have to compete for their safe seats. The parties can no longer plunk down a preferred candidate in a riding an expect him/her to get automatically elected.

The other relevant statistic is the pathetic amount of people between the ages of 18 to 34 that actually come out and vote. 22% of the people eligible to vote between 18-24 vote. 35% of the people eligible to vote between 25-34 vote. Is it any wonders that we see our politicians giving away the country to all the old people (healthcare, MSP rebates, CPP, OAS, etc.)? It’s not because politicans believe we have a moral obligation to take care of them, it’s because they have a disproportionate voice in elections!

What you do not want to see in a democracy are inaccessible voting stations or people visually inspecting who you voted for. In addition, there should be the right for observers to ensure that votes are counted properly. As long as these conditions are satisfied, a low voter turnout works to the advantage of those that actually do vote and is not “dangerous for our democracy” as Neufeld points out. So if you’re against BC-STV, just stay at home and watch the election on television.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 2nd, 2005 and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.