Election spending caps hurt diversity, inclusion

Limits benefit incumbents and hold back newcomers, Ian Brodie writes.

Last week, the Notley government proposed reforms to the rules governing municipal elections in the province. The plan, announced by Municipal Affairs Minister Shaye Anderson, would limit any individual’s donation to a city council campaign to $4,000 and stop municipal candidates from raising money until a year before election day.

Eventually, it will also impose spending limits on candidates. The province, Anderson said, believes elections “should be decided by people, not by money.” Alberta’s move comes only a few months after the Trudeau government introduced legislation to limit campaign spending in federal elections in the three months before an election is called.

In an era when campaign donations from individuals are capped, spending limits of this sort have outlived their usefulness. Candidates struggle to get voters interested in elections. In Calgary’s last municipal election, turnout reached a 40-year-high of 58 per cent. In 2013, only 36 per cent of registered voters turned up at the polls. Capping campaign spending makes it harder for candidates to reach voters, leaves voters without enough information to make an informed choice and, most damagingly, makes it harder for new candidates to break into politics and improve the diversity and inclusion of our politics.

Campaign spending in Canadian federal elections has been capped since 1974. In a typical five-week campaign, a party running candidates in every federal riding can spend just short of $25 million.

These spending caps were supposed to reduce the influence of money in politics. There is always reason to worry that a small number of very generous donors could exercise too much influence over politicians.

But a good election campaign needs to reach a lot of voters, and reaching voters costs money. While $25 million sounds like a lot of money, it does not go very far in a huge country with many languages spoken at home where voters do not spend much time thinking about politics. If we want elections to be competitive, candidates have to be free to spend enough money to run a vigorous election campaign without giving big dollar donors any outsized influence.

The best way to do that is to cap individual donations as Anderson has proposed. His $4,000 limit on individual donations might well be too generous. Federal political contributions are limited to $1,575 per year, and the average donor gives considerably less than that.

But limiting campaign spending limits the diversity of elections. How so?

In 21st-century elections, candidates compete to find, among the thousands or millions of citizens eligible to vote, those who can be persuaded to come to the polls.

They have to find three groups of voters: first, their dependable supporters, then habitual voters they can persuade to vote for their candidates, and finally people who don’t usually vote but can be persuaded to come to the polls.

Dependable supporters are the least expensive voters to find and keep engaged. Incumbent politicians develop a good idea of who their dependable supporters are. Habitual voters not attached to a party are the next most expensive voters to recruit. They go to the polls, but need to be persuaded to vote for a particular candidate.

The biggest and most expensive group to reach are those who don’t always vote. These are usually recently naturalized citizens, young people, shift workers, and so on. Making sure campaigns have enough money to get these people to the polls expands the diversity of our elections.

Moreover, incumbent politicians at city council, the provincial legislature and in the House of Commons have lots of ways to build their name recognition and local support. Challengers need effective campaigns to keep incumbents on their toes, and usually that means they need to spend money.

Spending limits protect incumbent politicians and hurt newcomers to politics.