The right to decline
How you can send a message without casting a vote for a candidate,
Breaking up with partisan politics can be hard to do.
That’s what Carol MacKinnon discovered when she told Ontario election officials in Barrie that she wanted to decline her ballot — effectively voting for “none of the above.” She was met with “blank faces.” “I was kind of shocked. I had to explain the difference between a declined vote and a spoiled vote,” MacKinnon said.
“They didn’t know what I was talking about.”
MacKinnon voted early by special ballot at the Barrie-Innisfil returning office before advance polling began last week, which may have further muddled the matter as there is a different process for collecting those ballots. Elections Ontario confirmed officials in Barrie had to consult a manual about the right to decline and to be sure proper procedure was followed.
Ontarians eligible to vote in the June 7 election have the right to formally forfeit their vote. If you aren’t impressed by any of the candidates, parties or platform promises on offer, you can officially send the message that you’re just not into them by declining your ballot, and Elections Ontario will count it separately from spoiled or unmarked ballots in the official results.
Declining is different from spoiling a ballot because it distinguishes voter intent. You can spoil a ballot by doing things such as drawing a happy face on it, crossing out a candidate’s name or writing in a joke contender like Mayor Quimby. Spoiling a ballot leaves room to wonder if someone was uninformed. Declining a ballot is an unequivocal statement that the voter is unsatisfied with the choices.
Only Ontario, Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan allow electors to officially decline. There is no option to do so federally.
MacKinnon is a dyed-in-the-wool Progressive Conservative but she doesn’t support the party’s leader, Doug Ford, and she wanted her voice to be heard.
“If you spoil your ballot it doesn’t count, and I thought, geez, well then there must be another way. That’s when I started to look it up on the internet and I found out about declining and thought oh-ho! That’s a good way, because it’s counted,” MacKinnon said.
Officials initially told her the option to decline didn’t exist, she said.
After they looked into it, MacKinnon was concerned officials wouldn’t tally her declined vote properly so she voted for the incumbent, Liberal MPP Ann Hoggarth.
“My intent was to go in to decline and I thought, they don’t know what the devil to do with the (declined) ballot,” MacKinnon said.
She filed a formal complaint with Elections Ontario.
“People need to know their (declined) vote counts.”
A spokesperson at Elections Ontario said there was added confusion because special ballots are collected differently. Citizens who aren’t able to make it out to advance polls or on election day can vote by special ballot, which MacKinnon did. Special ballots are all lumped together and then separated and tabulated on polling day.
“We understand that the voter was concerned that the election officials may not have been following proper procedure for declined special ballots, but in fact, they were.”
It’s not the first time Elections Ontario has faced flak over the right to decline. In 2014, a record 29,937 Ontarians declined their vote, the highest ever since Elections Ontario started keeping track in 1975 and representing 0.6 per cent of all who turned up at the polls.
Elections Ontario also recorded 22,885 rejected ballots and 12,124 unmarked ballots in 2014, when overall turnout ticked up to about 51 per cent, from 48 per cent in 2011.
At the time, the surge was attributed to social media awareness campaigns. There were reports that poll staff were confused when citizens tried to decline in 2014.
Retiree Clifford Tattersall said in the last election an official told him to spoil his ballot instead.
“But I insisted that my ballot was to be declined,” Tattersall said. “At that point the person who handed me that ballot shouted from one end of the room to the supervisor, ‘Hey, this guy wants to decline his ballot. What do I do?’ “I was shocked,” he said. Declining is different from leaving a ballot blank because it involves a voter actively informing officials they are choosing to opt out. When a poll worker hands you your ballot, you can immediately hand it straight back to them, and say out loud, “I decline.” The official then marks the ballot as declined and places it in a separate envelope.
Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, has previously threatened to take Elections Ontario to court for not adequately promoting the right in its voter education and information material, including advertising, pamphlets and on its website.
“It’s totally patronizing to say the only thing you should do as a voter is go and hold your nose and cast your vote for one of the candidates, even if you don’t like any of them,” Conacher said.
Champions of the scratch vote argue it could potentially boost turnout because unhappy voters would be more likely to show up to the polls if their dissatisfaction counted.
Elections Ontario noted it has updated its website to better provide information on declined ballots.
Conacher wants to take it a step farther and include space for electors to write a sentence or two explaining why they’re protesting. The idea is that it could force political parties to be more accountable and responsive to what citizens want.
For example, he said, if 5 per cent of voters chose none of the above because they didn’t like what the parties were promising on climate policy, they could tell them so. Four years later, parties may try to woo those dissatisfied voters to their camp by tailoring their platform.
But no voter is a political island and the election must go on in a democracy. Some argue declining is just a way to vent steam and does not contribute to the political outcome.
Instead of using the ballot to say what you want, you’re saying what you don’t want — which still leaves someone else in the driver’s seat when it comes to picking your representatives at Queen’s Park, said Dennis Pilon, an associate professor at York University who focuses on electoral systems.
“Usually that’s the last resort. People are turning to this because they’re so frustrated,” he said.
The larger problem behind the protest vote is the lack of power a citizen feels to meaningfully participate in democratic dialogue.
“The problem is inequality, that is the root of our democratic malaise,” he said.
“Democracy isn’t like a consumer market, it’s not a question of everybody getting exactly what they want. Democracy is more about being able to participate meaningfully in the discussion and the decisions.”