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Fair Elections Act will bring big changes on voting day

This election will test the Fair Elections Act, which critics fear will leave homeless and First Nations unable to vote.

Thestar.com
Aug. 23, 2015
By Bruce Campion-Smith

The marathon election campaign will be a test of more than voters’ patience and attention span.

It will be a test of the Fair Elections Act, the controversial and sweeping legislation that has introduced changes to how Canadians prove they are eligible to vote, the way elections are financed and how voting shenanigans are investigated.

It puts more money in the pockets of political parties for a longer campaign, while capping how much third parties can spend on election advertising.

To its boosters, the changes are a necessary update, motivated in part by the need to guard against voting fraud.

“I think we have a reasonable package that enables everyone to vote while protecting the integrity of the system,” Pierre Poilievre, Conservative candidate and democratic reform minister, told the Star in an interview.

However, critics of the legislation fear some of the changes will leave people in some particular groups - such as students, the homeless and First Nations - unable to vote. Critics argue that many of the changes were deliberately designed to skew the advantage in favour of the Conservatives on Election Day.

“There’s no question it will have an impact in the current election,” said Garry Neil, executive director of the Council of Canadians.

Even Marc Mayrand, the chief electoral officer, has warned that some of the changes “will not serve Canadians well.”

The so-called Fair Elections Act stirred controversy from the moment it was introduced in February 2014. At the time, Poilievre said the law would put “special interests on the sidelines and rule-breakers out of business.”

But academics, students and other concerned groups came forward to warn that the changes would actually make it harder for some Canadians to cast a ballot.

For example, the law prohibits the use of the voter information card as a document that can be used as proof of residency. This has sparked concerns that some voters - notably students living away from home, seniors in long-term care homes and aboriginals - may lack the necessary identification, which must show their address, to vote.

There have also been changes to vouching, where one voter with proper identification could vouch for the identity of another voter at the polling station. An estimated 120,000 Canadians used vouching to vote in 2011.

“We can expect that a significant proportion of them would not be able to vote under the rules proposed,” Mayrand told a parliamentary committee in March 2014.

Mayrand noted that the worry around Canadian elections wasn’t fraud, but declining turnout.

“It is essential to understand that the main challenge for our electoral democracy is not voter fraud, but voter participation,” Mayrand told MPs.

Eliminating vouching and the information card would do little to improve the integrity of the voting process but “have taken away the ability of many qualified electors to vote,” he said.

That concern is echoed by Bilan Arte, national chairwoman of the Canadian Federation of Students, who said young people may lack the necessary ID that shows their identity and address.

That’s because they can find themselves living in two or three locations over the course of a year as they go between home, school and a job.

“The proof of address is particularly a challenge for young people,” Arte said.

In a pilot project in the last election, some 400,000 voters used the voter information card as valid ID. “It’s a very significant piece of ID that is utilized by a lot of Canadians, notably young people,” she told the Star.

Removing the information card as a valid form of ID will make it “significantly more difficult ... for young people and for those other demographics to be able to participate in the electoral process,” she said.

“The arguments that the government is making is really just smoke and mirrors for an agenda that is about suppressing the votes of young people,” Arte said.

Arte said this is especially worrisome at a time when overall voter turnout is declining - it was 61 per cent in the 2011 election - and is even worse among younger voters.

The students federation and the Council of Canadians went to court seeking an injunction on two key elements of the act - disallowing the use of the voter information card as proof of identification to vote and the removal of vouching.

The legal bid failed but the applicants say they intend to continue their court challenge of the law after the election.

Neil, of the Council of Canadians, said that evidence produced at the injunction hearing suggested that tens of thousands of Canadians could be barred from voting because of the changes introduced by the act.

The groups most vulnerable are youth, First Nations, marginalized people like the homeless and seniors, he said. With the exception of seniors, the others are “far more likely to vote non-Conservative,” he said.

“It is the government of the day, with a majority, which is trying to write election rules that are going to favour that party and their candidates. There’s no question about it,” Neil said.

Neil is also concerned that the new legislation restricts the ability of Elections Canada and the chief electoral officer to speak out on election issues, either to encourage turnout or alert voters to potential troubles, like the misdirecting robocalls of the 2011 vote.

Poilievre downplayed the concerns and said he has no worries that a voter will be left unable to cast a ballot in the coming vote.

“I’m not troubled. I haven’t met anybody who says they’re going to have a problem voting. I’m pretty confident that everybody has some shred of paper with their name on it,” he said.

A driver’s licence alone will suffice. For those lacking a licence, there are more than 40 other possible ways to prove ID - a voter would have to show two pieces of accepted ID and one must show his or her current address.

“I think we’re in good shape,” Poilievre said.

He also defended the restrictions on Elections Canada’s ability to speak out.

“I think it’s probably in the interests of the agency to focus its communications on the nuts and bolts of voting and leave the rest to civil society and political parties. The role of Elections Canada is to inform and the role of political actors is to motivate the voter,” Poilievre said.

Arte said the student federation, which represents more than 500,000 people nationwide, is working to boost student participation in the upcoming vote by hosting candidates’ debates on campuses and pressing the political parties to engage on issues important to young people, like post-secondary education.

She said the federation is working to improve awareness among students on how they can vote.

“We’re doing our best to ensure that young people are getting to the polls and are able to navigate a system that has thus far been designed to make it harder for them to vote,” Arte said.

Election Day by the numbers

5 concerns about the Fair Elections Act

1. Voter information card: The law prohibits the use of the voter information card as a document that can be used as proof of residency. This has sparked concerns that some voters - notably students living away from home, seniors in long-term care homes and aboriginals - may lack the necessary ID showing their address needed to vote.

2. Vouching: Previously, one voter with proper identification could vouch for the identity of another at the polling station. The Conservatives had originally wanted to ban the practice outright but softened their stance after criticism the move would prevent some Canadians - an estimated 120,000, according to Elections Canada - from voting. Now voters will still require some ID to prove their identity but can have another elector vouch for their address.

3. Advance polls: Canadians will have an extra day to vote in advance polls. The act sets out four advance polling days - 10, nine, eight and seven days in advance of Election Day. That means Canadians can vote on Thanksgiving weekend.

4. Elections Canada: Critics say the law limits what the independent agency can publicly say about elections, such as efforts to encourage voter turnout. In the face of criticism, the Conservatives loosened the leash a bit but the head of Elections Canada is still limited to speaking on five topics: how to become a candidate; how to get on the list of electors; how to vote; what is needed to vote; and the services available to assist voters with disabilities.

5. Finances: The act allows political parties to spend more if campaigns go longer than 37 days, a big factor in the current 78-day campaign. That means the political parties running candidates in all 338 federal ridings could spend up to $54.5 million, up from $25 million allowed in a 37-day campaign. That gives an advantage to the deep-pocketed Conservatives. At the same time, the act imposes spending limits on third parties on election advertising - in this longer campaign, the third-party limits are $439,410 and $8,788 per riding.