Electoral survey needs reform

Voters can answer baffling questions multiple times

The best thing about the Trudeau government’s new online survey on democracy is that you can vote as often as you want. I completed it twice. Somebody tweeted that they’d answered all the questions at the government’s mydemocracy.ca site five times, each time with different answers.

Social media set fire to mydemocracy.ca in a bonfire of satire and ridicule all day Monday. One tweeted a mock question: “Would you rather fight one horse-sized party, or many small parties the size of a duck?”

Experts in the science of polling say this isn’t the best technique if you’re in the business of canvassing public opinion. Not that it matters, since this is not by any means a survey of Canadian opinion. At best, it’s an attempt to shape public opinion, to mobilize public opinion, to get Canadians to think about something that they have not thought about and would rather not think about: electoral reform. More likely, it’s the government’s effort to drive electoral reform off the policy reservation.

Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef, having blundered her way through last week’s Commons’ committee report, came under opposition attack again Monday for sending out a questionnaire to millions of Canadians that failed to ask key questions. Why, for example, does mydemocracy. ca fail to ask Canadians if they want a referendum on electoral reform?

But mydemocracy.ca does not really want people’s opinions on the use of referenda or any of the elements of proportional representation theory. The objective is to lure Canadians into thinking about the issues and wrap their otherwise preoccupied minds around the giant and impenetrable ball of political wax that is electoral reform. It is, above all, an attempt to stimulate public participation and, possibly, give the government ammunition to drive public opinion, preferably in the other direction.

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It will not be easy, especially with this questionnaire, to come up with any meaningful conclusions.

That’s why it doesn’t matter how many times any one individual — out of the millions who will receive information cards through the mail — answers the questionnaire. In many ways, the option of filling in the same form five or six times gives Canadians the opportunity to refine, rethink and then re-rethink answers to questions that are often, shall we say, thorny thickets of twisted negatives that lead nowhere.

Some are simply negative brain-teasers. Do you “strongly disagree” that “eligible voters should not be forced to vote.”

Others are simply impenetrable: “Which would you prefer? Members of Parliament that always support policies that they think are best for their constituents, even if their constituents disagree OR Members of Parliament that always support (what) their constituents want, even if the MPs themselves personally disagree?”

That either/or monstrosity of false choicism is followed later by another: “Which would you prefer? Members of Parliament that do what their party promised, even if it means going against what their constituents want OR Members of Parliament that do what their constituents want, even if it means going against what their party promised?”

Such questions are well worth four or five tries, if not a PhD in political science. The whole mess of data — if that is the word for what they collect — will then be passed on to the company that concocted the survey with the government — Vox Pop Labs. Vox Pop will presumably then come up with some kind of analysis of what Canadians think about whatever it is that mydemocracy.ca is trying to get them to think about.

Vox Pop Labs is a group of whiz-bang social scientists who claim to be “revolutionizing the science of decisionmaking for the information age.” It created Vote Compass, which was used by the CBC as a kind of viewer participation sport during federal elections. Viewers were asked to answer a few dozen questions about policy, and then assigned to one of the federal parties. Critics said the assignments were warped and tended to categorize viewers as Liberal, no matter what their answers to questions.

Vox Pop officials denied the claim, although they were quick to point out that their Vote Compass methods — online participation without limit and with no real control — had no predictive or scientific value. Similar Vote Compass questionnaires exist in other countries, including Australia. I completed the Australian questionnaire Monday from my Toronto office. Even though I know nothing of Australian politics and have never been there, I was deemed a backer of the Australian Liberal party.

After Canadians complete their mydemocracy.ca questionnaire, they are assigned to one of four political categories. On my first try, I was pigeonholed as a “Guardian” for my presumably archconservative views against radical reform and mandatory voting. My second completion (in which I checked my sex as “Other”) the computer quickly labelled me an “Innovator,” presumably because of the rollicking inconsistencies in my mostly random responses to questions, without regard to any principle or preference.

Another National Post editor/writer answered “neutral” on the first set of questions, and ritually ticked the left box in answer to other questions. For these insights, he was categorized as a “Pragmatist,” suggesting he favoured governments that “strike a balance between decisive action and compromise.”

When it comes to electoral reform, with mydemocracy. ca the Liberals and Maryam Monsef will be in a position to use the results to categorize themselves as pragmatists who compromised on their electoral promise by decisively doing nothing. Minister of Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef