Record number of York Region voters decline ballots

YorkRegion.com
June 20, 2014
Sean Pearce

“None of the above” was never in danger of winning a seat in the provincial legislature in any of York Region’s ridings, or anywhere else in Ontario for that matter, but the fact remains a larger number of voters opted to decline their ballots in the 2014 election than ever before.

Political science professors are split on what exactly that tells us.

Altogether, 2,053 voters in the region declined their ballots in the June 12 provincial election, which represents an increase of nearly 1,300 per cent compared to the 151 individuals who did so in 2011.

York-Simcoe led the way in terms of declined ballots, with 484 electors saying “Thanks, but no thanks” to all of the candidates, an increase of more than 1,500 per cent over the 30 who chose that option nearly three years ago, while Oak Ridges-Markham had the second highest number of declined ballots at 441, which equates to an increase of 950 per cent over the 42 voters who rejected all comers in 2011.

Across Ontario, 31,399 voters declined their ballots in this year’s election contest, whereas 2,335 did the same in the previous provincial race. That’s a jump of more than 1,200 per cent and represents the largest number of votes for “none of the above” recorded. The previous peak of 20,795 was witnessed in the 1990 election campaign.

York Region and the province also saw increases in the numbers of spoiled and unmarked ballots, but even those combined with the declined ballots represent but a tiny fraction of the more than 4.8 million ballots cast across Ontario’s 107 ridings.

The sharp increase in the number of declined ballots certainly suggests it was an effort on the part of many voters to make a political point, York University political science professor Dennis Pilon said. There was definitely a movement in this campaign that saw people encouraging others to decline their vote as a means of registering their dissatisfaction.

“The increase in declined ballots should concern our politicians, because for a voter to make the effort to come to the polls just to make a statement against the political system is a degree of effort that is not typical,” he said, adding unhappy voters typically don’t show up at all. “Of course, what will probably happen is that the law will be amended to abolish declining one’s ballot, or, at the very least, the politicians will want to know why such an opportunity was introduced in the first place.”

Fellow York political science professor Bob Drummond agreed there was a greater than normal public sentiment geared toward rejecting all of the major political parties this time around.

“Some people clearly found (Tim) Hudak’s PCs threatening, they found the Liberal record of scandals off-putting and they did not want to vote NDP either, because they never do or because they believed the party had forced an unnecessary election or because they felt the party had abandoned its principles,” he said. “Some of those voters may have voted Green, but many others probably said ‘none of the above’ by refusing or spoiling their ballots.”

University of Toronto political science professor Nelson Wiseman isn’t so certain any significant conclusions can be drawn from the number of declined ballots in this year’s election. He attributes much of the jump in the number of people declining their votes to the fact there was a huge amount of media coverage on the subject.

In any case, none of the parties or their leaders are likely to lose much sleep over the number of declined ballots in the recent contest, Wiseman said. Declining, spoiling or submitting an unmarked ballot all make a statement, he said, but all that those running for election really care about is who wins at the end of the day.

“If you show up at the polls, you’re still legitimizing the electoral process,” Wiseman said. “If you don’t vote, you’re detached, but that doesn’t mean you don’t care.”

That said, it would be going too far to assume everyone who didn’t vote did so out of frustration or discontent with the process, he continued.

Many people likely felt they were too busy, didn’t see the impact on their lives one way or another or had their own reasons for avoiding the polling stations June 12, said Wiseman, adding the slight increase in voter turnout, from 48.2 per cent in 2011 to 52.1 per cent, may suggest the downward trend in participation has bottomed out.