Can new voters be taught to pop up?
There are brightly coloured construction paper hearts plastered on the walls, cubbyholes stuffed with plush animals and toddlers babbling as their parents line up to vote.
Instead of candidates and political parties on the ballot there are policy issues like health care, education and immigration, which voters discuss excitedly in Russian, Spanish, Farsi and English before sharing a couple of takeout pizzas.
This isn’t your typical polling station. It’s a Vote Pop-up, a dry run for a real election, which almost none in the room of mostly women at North York Community House on Tuesday are able to participate in because they aren’t citizens yet.
The idea is that when they do become eligible to vote, they’ll be familiar with what can be a complicated process for many newcomers and other groups including youth, Indigenous and homeless people, ethnocultural communities and voters with disabilities. Elections Canada has pointed out these groups generally face hurdles at the polls and some participate in elections at lower levels compared to the rest of the population.
It’s something the Liberal government’s recent attempt at democratic reform, a 300-plus-page veritable omnibus bill tabled last Monday, tries to tackle. Among other provisions targeting third-party partisan activity, political ad spending, transparency over how political parties collect and use voters’ personal information, limiting the length of the campaign, and12-hour advance polling days, Bill C-76 contains several new and recycled provisions to improve access to the ballot.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said the measures should be in place by the next federal election, though acting chief electoral officer Stéphane Perrault recently warned any changes applying to 2019 should already be in place.
The bill also reverses changes made by the then-Conservative government in 2014, which the Liberals promised to do on the campaign trail. It would allow registered voters to vouch for the identity or address of another voter who doesn’t have the requisite ID, make voter identification cards valid forms of ID to vote, and boost the Chief Electoral Officer’s powers when it comes to voter education and outreach.
Tuesday’s pop-up, part of Ryerson University’s Democratic Engagement Exchange program, took place during North York Community House’s Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada class.
Irina Usova came to Canada from Russia about a year-and-a-half ago and is learning English to improve her job prospects. She used Google’s translate app to scan a photo of the ballot and convert it to Russian.
“For me, it’s education,” she said. Education handily won Tuesday’s vote, with health care a close second as the key election issues for the group. Twentyfour ballots were cast in total, including one spoiled.
As she cast her ballot, Usova said she was thinking about her daughter Alina, 17, and son Timur, 7, who attend school in Toronto.
“We want them to get the best education,” Usova later told the Star. “My daughter says her thoughts and opinions are important here and that gives her freedom.”
Beatriz Alas, community engagement co-ordinator at North York Community House, said new citizens can find the electoral process particularly daunting.
“What we hear is they’re overwhelmed by all the information and by everything the candidates seem to be offering and not being able to discern what’s fact from fiction. It’s hard to know what the truth is and what’s just campaigning,” said Alas, who also heads up non-partisan get-out-the-vote efforts in the neighbourhood.
Some seasoned voters might commiserate, but it can be even more difficult for recent immigrants who may also be grappling with a language barrier as they try to understand a new electoral system. Some could be from countries where voting is a risk, others may have trouble discerning accurate sources of information or “even knowing which mediums you can trust and which ones are just hype.”
“The biggest question that we always get from people is … just tell me who to vote for,” Alas said.
Yasmin Dawood, associate law professor at U of T and Canada Research Chair in democracy, constitutionalism and electoral law, said Bill C-76 is a step in the right direction when it comes to educating the electorate.
“One of the key values in democracy is transparency — knowing what the rules are, understanding what the government is doing so … allowing the Chief Electoral Officer to communicate directly with voters is very important,” Dawood said.
Bill C-76 also gives citizens living abroad for more than five years the right to vote in federal elections again. Longterm expatriates can’t vote under rules that were enacted in 1993, but only enforced after 2007.
Erik Johnson, who moved to London, England from Calgary in 2004, reads Canadian newspapers every morning and still feels a deep connection to his mother country. He rents out an apart- ment in Calgary and returns to visit family at least once a year.
“I’m still in my heart a Canadian … I don’t have the same attachments (to the U.K.),” Johnson said.
A few years ago, he had trouble getting the Canadian government to recognize his divorce from his partner. Before same-sex marriage was legalized it was classified as “civil partnership” in Britain, but when the union was dissolved, it was not immediately clear if he was divorced in the eyes of the Canadian government. It was eventually sorted out with the help of Alberta’s then-minister of justice who wrote Johnson a special letter to bring to court.
“I was clearly impacted by Canadian law but had a hard time influencing it … and I didn’t really have an MP who I could go to to plead my case,” he said.
The bill brings back vouching, where someone who lives in the same riding as you can swear you are who you say you are if you show up at the polling booth on election day without proper ID, such as a driver’s licence, passport, health card or birth certificate. It also restores the voter identification card as acceptable ID to vote.
“It’s often homeless people, Indigenous people on reserves … elderly people who are in care homes (who) may not have the right identification or residency,” said Cara Zwibel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
Cathy Crowe, an advocate for the homeless, said polling locations, identification and education all factor into someone’s ability to participate in the democratic process.
“Polling stations are often in residential or business type locations, not in shelters or drop-ins so they’re less accessible,” she said. “People are in crisis just trying to survive. They are less likely to experience an all-candidates meeting either in person or on TV, or receive candidates’ literature or a door knock canvas as they don’t have a home.”
Zwibel added the vouching process itself can be onerous.
“It’s cumbersome … there’s a lot of paperwork,” she said.
David Lepofsky, a prominent accessibility advocate who is blind, said Bill C-76 is a baby step toward improving access for voters with disabilities. While reimbursing candidates and parties for accessibility efforts — such as compensation for having someone translate a stump speech in sign language — and expanding at-home and other accommodation mechanisms to voters with all disabilities, not just physical, are good steps, he still sees barriers.
“They give you a ballot which I can’t read. They offered an overlay (sheet) where you can line it up and try to mark it yourself but you don’t know if you line it up right or you spoiled your ballot,” he said.
The alternative is asking a poll worker to help mark the ballot.
“It means I have to reveal who I voted for and I’ll never know if they marked it right and hope they don’t tell anyone.”
He is advocating for more accessible voting technology in all ridings. Lepofsky voted in the last provincial election with a machine that read him the ballot through headphones. After he made his selection, the machine then spat out a printed completed ballot to be counted. People who have trouble using a pen can move a paddle left or right and those with mobility issues can sip and puff on a straw to vote, he said.
Should Bill C-76 pass, it would allow14to 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote so that by the time they turn 18 they’ll be transferred to the permanent register and be all set to cast a ballot.
Ontario recently established a provisional register for 16- and 17-year-olds with an eye to increasing youth participation in the electoral process, but a paltry 44 students had signed up as of March.
Elections Ontario has since opened up electronic registration, which it said could boost sign-ups.
Zalika Morgan, a Grade 10 student at Central Technical School, recently participated in CIVIX’s mock student budget consultation.
The youth political engagement advocacy group is also running mock elections this month ahead of Ontario’s June election.
Morgan said she was excited to express her thoughts on the budget.
“What I liked about participating … is having the opportunity to get my voice heard as a teenager to show that teens have a choice to participate in government and political decisions,” she said. “If I could vote I would because it would be exciting to do research on different candidates to compare their different point of views and what they’re offering to society.”
Taylor Gunn of CIVIX said pre-registering isn’t the cure-all to increasing turnout, and particularly among the youngest voters who traditionally are less likely to get out and vote.
“I don’t know if being on the list is a motivating factor, it’s more how do you find ways that people can see participating in the democratic process is worth their time,” Gunn says. “If you want to participate in an election, you will cause yourself to find out where it is. You will tell your mom that you’re going to be late for her birthday party because you have to go cast your ballot before the cake arrives. That comes from motivation. That’s not knowing when election day is.”
John Beebe, who runs the vote pop-up project through Ryerson’s Democratic Engagement Exchange Program, said sometimes people may feel embarrassed if they don’t know how the system works or what the issues are, and therefore, won’t ask, or vote.
“People don’t feel like their voice even matters. So it’s not that it’s an inconvenient time of day to vote or an inconvenient place or they don’t even think all politicians are crooks. They themselves think, my vote is not important,” said Beebe.
To help get people thinking differently, he suggests community organizations ask pop-up participants to get creative and answer the question “why vote?” At North York Community House, those answers formed a colourful display on a poster board: “Child care is a good thing,” one read.
“We need health care for a good life,” said another.