Poilievre rules out recognizing declined ballots
Conservatives have no plans to amend election law
OTTAWA — The federal government has no plans to change its elections law so voters can register a declined vote, a form of protest that hit record levels in the recent Ontario election.
The Conservative government made sweeping changes to the federal election law this year through the Fair Elections Act, including detailed rules for voter identification at polling stations. But it “has no plans to amend the Canada Elections Act to track declined ballots,” the office of Democratic Reform Minister Pierre Poilievre said this week.
More than 31,000 Ontario voters declined their ballots in the June 12 election, the highest number since 1975.
Formally declining to vote differs from spoiling a ballot in that the voter’s refusal to vote must be declared at the polling station. It’s a right that’s available in Manitoba and Alberta, as well as Ontario. Declining a ballot gives voters a way to indicate disapproval of all of the candidates.
But federally, it’s designated a “rejected” ballot, a category that also includes those that have been left blank, marked for more than one candidate, defaced or marked improperly.
There is no way of knowing what the voter’s intent was in failing to mark the ballot properly for one candidate.
“It should be on the ballot as ‘none of the above’ on the bottom with a couple of lines to give a reason,” said Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch.
More than 25 years ago, the federal elections agency pushed unsuccessfully for the right to register a protest vote. As well, two private member’s bills sought to enshrine the declined ballot in federal law; one would have let Canadians give their reason for declining. But neither had the necessary support.
“It clearly is a mechanism for combining a message of being an engaged citizen,” who is willing to vote “while also saying no candidate and/ or their party, has the citizen’s support in a particular election,” NDP democratic reform critic Craig Scott said.
“It is well worth including it on the list of electoral re- forms — including reversing the negative effects of this government’s ‘unfair elections act’ — any government will need to consider after the 2015 election.”
The list of needed reforms is long, said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, but declined ballots isn’t a priority for her. Topping her list is proportional representation, which would distribute seats in the House of Commons based on vote counts.
Scott Simms, the Liberals’ Liberal democratic reform critic, said the idea of declined ballots sounds good in principle, but he questioned how it might work federally.
“It’s one thing to do it, but then you have address the question: What do we do now if the majority decline?”