Democratic rights

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 3:51 PM - 0 Comments

Elizabeth May is joining an attempt to challenge the first-past-the-post electoral system as a violation of the Charter.

The case would argue that the Constitution protects the right of Canadians to have “effective representation,” which goes beyond having the right to cast a ballot. The two groups, the Association for the Advancement of Democratic Rights and Fair Vote Canada, have also earned an endorsement from Green Party leader Elizabeth May.

“The key issue is not that it’s unfair to the Green Party,” May said Tuesday at a news conference with representatives from the two groups. ”It’s unfair to democracy. It’s unfair to voters, and I think it’s a big reason for the decline in voter turnout.”

Ms. May argues that voter turnout is higher in countries with proportional representation. Going back to some numbers I posted last year, that’s somewhat true: all of the countries listed there, with the exception of Canada and France, use some kind of proportional representation. So while proportional representation is present in Denmark, Sweden, Italy and the Netherlands (all with turnout over 80%), it is also present in Portugal (under 60%) and Switzerland (under 50%).

Our gerontocracy

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 9:33 AM - 11 Comments

Frank Graves considers the ramifications of declining voter turnout.

Have we passed the brink from democracy to oligarchy? While on pattern with a disturbing downward trajectory in voter participation, this movement into the realm where the majority of citizens aren’t voting may be a wakeup call for those who think that elections shouldn’t be on track to a fringe activity. What may make matters worse is that this democratic decline is particularly pronounced in two sectors of our society — the young and the economically vulnerable. Although these groups have always had lower participation rates, their current anaemic levels of voting make it difficult to claim that governments legitimately speak for these large and growing portions of society.

The patient is unresponsive

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 14, 2011 at 12:43 PM - 1 Comment

Jane Hilderman argues that people won’t vote if they don’t think the system is truly accountable.

As we are learning from our focus groups, more important to Canadians, who are less likely to participate, is a government that listens when a problem arises, works to fix it, and keeps promises it made. On this they were resoundingly clear: improve the legitimacy of our existing institutions (and by extension politicians, too) through better responsiveness and accountability. The rest will take care of itself.

On that note, Mark Dance has some thoughts on opening Parliament up to the digital word here, here and here. The second of those posts proposes what Mark deems a “Digital House.”

Where have you gone Mackenzie King?

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 14, 2011 at 11:42 AM - 6 Comments

Susan Delacourt wonders if the Liberal party isn’t drawing its last breaths. Not unrelatedly, Stephen Clarkson plots the rise and fall of centrism and frets for it all.

Which political organization or organizations oppose this dangerous figure do not matter to most citizens, although the issue preoccupies militant New Democrats and loyal Liberals. What does matter is that the former centre, which now becomes the left alternative to Harper’s extremism, must regain power if a parliamentary civic culture is to be restored. Unless this restoration happens soon, it is hard to believe that it can be done without adding 21st-century, global wings to energize and internationalize what has become the country’s social-market alternative.

For the sake of argument, here are the popular vote share changes in the six applicable elections this year. Continue…

A hypothetical legislature

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 12:59 PM - 8 Comments

Last month there was some speculation that once this year’s round of elections was complete, Conservatives (of various partisan affiliations) might occupy more than half of all federal and provincial seats in the country.

Because of regional differences—especially in Quebec—this math is pretty subjective, but here’s one attempt to tally the standings with only Saskatchewan left to vote. Continue…

Election night in Newfoundland and the Yukon

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 7:14 PM - 1 Comment

With results now coming in from Newfoundland and Labrador the Progressive Conservatives appear to have been easily reelected. The NDP seems set to become the official opposition.

Later tonight, we should have results from the Yukon, where the Yukon Party is hoping to be reelected.

10:57pm. With six seats to the NDP’s five, the Liberals will remain the official opposition in Newfoundland. The New Democrats still drew a higher popular vote and their five seats are precisely five times as many as they had when the election was called.

1:00am. The Yukon Party holds on to its majority. The only movement from the 2006 result was for the New Democrats and Liberals: the former gaining three seats, the latter losing three.

Politics these days

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 12:04 PM - 47 Comments

While pollsters try to adjust for the demographics of voting, Ilona Dougherty defends the young non-voter.

You’ve probably heard the rote statistic about how only 37 per cent of Canadians aged 18-24 cast a ballot in the 2008 federal election, compared with 68 per cent of those over 65. But here’s something you may not have heard: during that same election, the majority of youth were not contacted in any way by a candidate or political party. What about the 65-plus crowd? Well, 69 per cent of them were contacted directly, by my calculations, using the Canadian Opinion Research Archive. When young Canadians aren’t being consistently asked to participate, it’s hardly surprising that they don’t turn out for elections.

Robert Asselin frets on a number of fronts. Continue…

Do the math

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 9:44 AM - 3 Comments

Nate Silver measures the impact of campaign advertising.

Campaign ads matter more when a candidate can outspend the opponent. This simple fact sometimes gets lost because people fixate on the content of ads. But the volume of ads may matter more. Consider the 2000 presidential election. In the final two weeks of the campaign, residents in battleground state were twice as likely to see a Bush ad as a Gore ad. This cost Gore 4 points among uncommitted voters. The same thing happened in 2008, when Mr. Obama vastly outspent his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain.

Ontarians: voting with their butts for Nobody

By Colby Cosh - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 7:08 AM - 95 Comments

Get ready for the Voter Turnout Nerds: you’ll be hearing from them today. Oh yes. It would not be like them to stay silent after an Ontario election in which fewer than half of technically eligible voters appear to have cast a ballot. The Turnout Nerds don’t care who won or who lost: they care about the mathematical purity of the electoral exercise. They’ll be everywhere you look in the media, ready with their diagnoses and their nostrums and, most of all, their disapproval.

It’s not the people who have let us down, they’ll tell us; it’s the government that has let the people down, fostering apathy (most heinous of all political sins) by failing to implement Brilliant Idea X or Salutary Scheme Y. But at what point do the people, apparently so deaf to the allure of electoral reforms and renovations, stop believing the Turnout Nerd’s comforting assurances of goodwill? Nothing seems to raise the holy quantity of Turnout very effectively. Any momentary rise seems to be followed by a more precipitate plunge. Are the electorate and the Turnout Nerds headed toward a frightful mutual collision with terrible truths about democracy?

Seven provinces, including Ontario, have adopted fixed election dates, partly as a response to the Turnout Problem. When the Harper government introduced fixed dates in 2006—we all remember how well that turned out, don’t we?—this was one of the stated goals: “One objective of setting fixed election dates is maximizing voter turnout.” Dozens of experts and quasi-experts made this argument, and we now have data from enough fixed-date elections to venture a conclusion on this noble experiment:

 Prov    Elxn           Change in Turnout
 BC      May 17 2005    +2.8%
 PE      May 28 2007    +0.5%
 NL      Oct 9 2007     -9.5%
 ON      Oct 10 2007    -4.1%
 BC      May 12 2009    -7.2%
 NB      Sept 27 2010   +4.0%
 PE      Oct 3 2011     -7.4%
 MB      Oct 4 2011     +0.7%
 ON      Oct 6 2011     -5.2%*
 NL      Oct 11 2011    ?
 SK      Nov 7 2011     ?
 *early estimate

[Points thumb downward, blows raspberry]

As provinces scrambled pell-mell to adopt fixed election dates, a few sociologists and political scientists pointed out that our municipal governments already have them—and that turnouts in Canadian municipal elections, possibly as a consequence, are feeble. Fixed election dates are also a characteristic of American electoral systems, as are pathetic turnouts at every level.

And what else do Canadian municipal elections and U.S. federal and state elections have in common? Huge incumbency advantages. Fixed dates are supposed to relieve a crucial advantage of incumbents in traditional Canadian elections, yet it’s the damnedest thing—if my math is right, incumbents won seven of the nine fixed-date elections in that table, and are extremely likely to be 9-for-11 a month from now. (I wouldn’t recommend establishing any crazy expectations about increased turnout in Newfoundland and Saskatchewan, either.)

Did we make a boo-boo? Did our democracy slip on a banana peel? Turnout Nerds sought fixed-date elections in the name of their obsession with voting as a simplistic moral imperative: it is starting to appear not only as if they failed on their own terms, but that their tonic for democracy may have had unanticipated, or at least undisclosed, side-effects. The Nerds’ next crusade will probably be for electronic voting, and if you think citizens are cynical about electoral politics now, wait until the apparatus falls into the hands of the people who gave the world golden hits like PC LOAD LETTER and PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA.

It is not that the Turnout Nerds have some vast constituency of voters who share their concern. Voter turnout is the kind of imaginary issue that spurs people to parrot pieties to pollsters, but the turnout itself is a perfect revealed-preference measure of how much people actually care. Aside from a few unfortunates who slip and fall or get hit by buses on their way to the polls, there can be almost no such thing as a person who is really concerned about turnout, but who stays home on Election Day. We all have near-total control over whether we turn out or not. The cost of going to the polls is pretty much zero. So the issue, if there is an issue, must be that a lot of people think that voting isn’t even worth the zero—that they personally accomplish nothing or less than nothing by voting: not even the reinforcement of a useful social norm or the cultivation of a private sense of satisfaction. Some of them are surely right about this.

The true place of the Turnout Nerd in the media ecosystem is to fill space—to give us something to talk and worry and argue about in the absence of authentic information about what stirrings and yearnings lie behind the raw vote totals. But the Nerd, with his worrywart ways focused on one principle of political health, may be having the same destructive effects on our political life as any other fundamentalist or monomaniac. These people are the orthorexics of politics. Ask Kenneth Arrow: the creation of a political system is always a balancing act between virtues, a compromise, a kludge. Greater political “engagement” and “involvement” are vague virtues at best; and more “excitement” is, if you ask me, an indubitable positive vice.

So can we start politely ignoring the Turnout Nerd? Heck, I won’t even insist on the “politely” part.

The coming fall

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, September 18, 2011 at 4:15 PM - 2 Comments

The Canadian Press, CBC and CTV preview the fall sitting. I’ll have my own scene-setter in the next print edition. In short, it promises to be a busy few months.

In addition to an ambiguous vow to focus on “jobs and the economy” and a promise to be “flexible” if necessary, the government has set out four legislative goals: the elimination of the long-gun registry, Canadian Wheat Board reform, passage of an omnibus crime bill and the rebalancing of representation in the House of Commons. When the House returns to business tomorrow it is set to resume second-reading debate on human smuggling and Senate reform legislation.

Beyond that there will be some or all of: a security perimeter deal with Obama administration, legislation to extend the parliamentary mandate for the military mission in Libya, the continuation of trade talks with the European Union, committee proceedings to fill two Supreme Court vacancies, an economic update from the Finance Minister, legislation to reinstate of two anti-terrorism provisions, legislation to institute copyright reform and decisions on shipbuilding procurement.

And beyond Ottawa, between October 1 and November 7, there will be seven provincial or territorial elections (Newfoundland and Labrador, PEI, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, the Northwest Territories and Yukon) and the selection of a new premier in Alberta.

Bikinis and beer are okay

By Cigdem Iltan - Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

The election of an Islamist government in Tunisia wouldn’t mean bikinis and beer won’t be welcome on its beaches, the leader of a once-outlawed party says. Rached Ghannouchi, who heads the North African country’s most liberal Islamist party, Al Nahda, says women may sunbathe and alcohol can flow freely if his party takes power in the elections scheduled for October. Ghannouchi, 70, supports a democratic interpretation of Islam, as seen in Turkey, and spent more than two decades in exile in London for his views. He returned to Tunisia in January after a popular uprising ended president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s 24-year despotic rule.

Al Nahda, which means “the awakening” in Arabic, is expected to emerge from the election with more votes than any other political party. Maintaining the appeal of Tunisia as a tourist destination is front of mind for the party, as the industry has taken a hit amidst an ongoing war in neighbouring Libya. Ghannouchi says his party will discourage drinking, rather than ban the use of alcohol. “Islam is not a closed religion. We want our country to be open to all nations,” he told the London Times. “Our aim will not be to cut supply of alcohol, but to reduce demand.”

Moving forward in Afghanistan

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 7:22 AM - 3 Comments

This article was sent to me by Grant Kippen, and I’m posting it here with his permission. It is being published today in the Dari-language newspaper Hasht-e Sobh

****

Let’s all take, yet another, collective breath and agree to move forward

Grant Kippen

June 26, 2011

There were two momentous announcements concerning Afghanistan this past week that will in their own and interconnected way have a profound impact on the short and long term future of the country.

The first and most widely reported announcement occurred on Wednesday evening when President Obama in a nation‐wide address announced the start of the drawdown of US troops from Afghanistan. The President also used the address to reaffirm his commitment to reducing the number of US based troops serving in Afghanistan over time and that responsibility for security within the country would be handed over to the Afghanistan National Security Forces by 2014.

This announcement completely overshadowed another announcement coming from the Afghanistan capital Kabul on Thursday morning where the members of the Special Elections Court announced their investigative findings into allegations of electoral fraud during the 2010 Parliamentary elections last September. The Special Court announcement was the latest salvo in an ongoing power struggle between the Executive and Legislative branches of government following the fraud marred elections, and their findings recommended that 62 currently serving Members of Parliament be removed. To put this number in perspective that is one quarter of the seats in the 249 seat Wolesi Jirga. The controversy of electoral fraud that played out so vividly in the 2009 Presidential and Provincial Council elections unfortunately carried over to the Parliamentary elections last year. The one thing that most Afghans and internationals will agree on was that extensive electoral fraud that took place during the September 2010 elections.

Under the Constitution and Election Law the institutions legally responsible for the electoral process are the Independent Election Commission (IEC) and the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC). At the time both the IEC and ECC were called upon to investigate many thousands of complaints filed regarding alleged fraudulent activities, and in the view of most informed Afghan and international observers of that process, these institutions discharged their responsibilities according to the laws, regulations and procedures that were in place.

The Special Elections Court was established by Presidential decree under the pretense that the IEC and ECC had not done their jobs properly. President Karzai condoned the creation of the Special Court notwithstanding that fact, according to legal experts, there appeared to be no basis in the law or under the Constitution for a mandate that allowed the overturning of final results as announced by the IEC. In reality though the Court was created only after senior IEC and ECC officials had refused to buckle to intense pressure being exerted on them by the Executive, including the threat of criminal prosecution by the Attorney‐General. The Houdiniesque slight of hand maneuvering and Khaddafi‐inspired logic creating the Special Elections Court was promptly dismissed by the Parliament, IEC, ECC and Afghan legal experts as illegal under the Constitution, a position that the international community agreed with from the start.

The Special Court’s decisions on Thursday clearly undermined the constitutional authority and independence of the IEC and the ECC. This is evidenced by the changes made to the vote totals by the Special Elections Court of sitting MPs and losing candidates and then reinstating 18 of 19 candidates disqualified by the ECC last fall; authorities only given to the IEC and ECC under the Electoral Law.

So, with the Special Elections Court announcement the Afghan people are at yet another crisis point in their ongoing struggle to re‐build the country after thirty years of war and civil conflict. For the vast majority of Afghans this situation just reinforces the hopelessness they feel towards the direction the re‐building effort has taken in general, and in particular about the effectiveness of their government to address the issues that matter most to them – a more secure environment in which to live and work, greater economic opportunity for themselves and their children, and some basic level of social assistance be it education or access to medical care. Clearly cooler heads need to prevail so that this latest crisis doesn’t escalate into something that all stakeholder groups – Afghan or international ‐ will come to regret in the future. It is time to put the interests of the Afghan people ahead of any personal feelings or perceived loss of face that has occurred over past events. The focus needs to be squarely on building for the future, while at the same time learning the important lessons of the past.

From an electoral perspective if action isn’t taken soon there will be no opportunity to correct those past mistakes. The status quo is an unacceptable situation not only for the citizens of Afghanistan but also for the taxpayers of those countries that are contributing funds so that elections can take place in an open and competitive manner. What we shouldn’t lose sight of are the millions of Afghans who turned out to vote in past elections and who are clearly committed to building a better future for themselves and their children. The immediate goal here is to ensure the 2014 Presidential elections are a significant improvement over efforts in 2009 and 2010. Electoral reform needs to begin immediately with the involvement of all domestic stakeholder groups supported by the international community. Building credible, legitimate and inclusive democratic institutions and processes is the only way forward for Afghanistan as a young, emerging and vibrant democracy.

The independence of the IEC and ECC needs to be respected, as does the role of Parliament in ensuring a proper check and balance on the actions of the Executive. The actions by the Special Elections Court only serves to undermine those key institutions that are established under the Constitution, namely the electoral bodies and the Legislature not to mention the independence of the judiciary. The existence and decisions of the Special Court only calls into question the respect that the Government itself has for the Constitution at a critical time when they are trying to reassure their own citizens that the Constitution will not be weakened through the reconciliation process. One has to wonder what message these same actions are sending to those insurgents the Government of Afghanistan hopes will re‐join Afghan society when the Government so clearly demonstrates its own unwillingness to respect the Constitution?

President Karzai has the perfect opportunity to step back from the current precipice and provide the leadership that is required to decisively match actions with the words he delivered in a speech to the NATO Summit in Lisbon last November: “Our Constitution, a harmonious blend of our Islamic values of justice and the universal principles of human rights, is our most important achievement of the last nine years … we need to enhance the checks and balances among the three branches of the state. … We are also committed to strengthening Parliament as an institution. I will work with the future Parliament to strengthen their constitutional role.”

Let’s not lose sight of the long‐term goal here, and that is to support the Afghan people as they rebuild their country. This will take time and there will be bumps along that road but let’s make sure that our combined efforts work to build a solid foundation for the future otherwise, we “will simply be putting mud in the water in order to cross the river”, according to an old Afghan proverb.

Grant Kippen is the former Chairman of the 2009 and 2005 Electoral Complaints Commission in Afghanistan and member of the National Democratic Institute’s Senior Experts Group that observed the 2010 Parliamentary Elections in Afghanistan.

Is democratic reform dying out?

By Charlie Gillis - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 at 10:05 AM - 25 Comments

Mark Blinch/Reuters

For would-be reformers of the mother of all parliaments, it was a brief and ill-fated courtship—ending with a door-slam to the face. One year ago, nearly six out of 10 Britons were telling pollsters they’d gladly dump the familiar first-past-the post electoral system (FPTP) in favour of a method that better reflected their democratic will. But when given their say in a referendum last week, voters dispatched the alternative with extreme prejudice: nearly 68 per cent opted to retain the old method of electing MPs, soundly rejecting the proposed system of preferential balloting known as the alternative vote (AV).

Advocates for change were quick to marshal explanations. The rejection spoke less to disapproval of AV than to dissatisfaction with its chief proponent, Liberal-Democrat Leader Nick Clegg, they said. Some complained voters had been hoodwinked by hysterical-sounding advertisements suggesting that a costly overhaul of the electoral system would suck money from, among other vital services, intensive care for infants.

None seemed to consider the possibility that FPTP might have its own inherent appeal. “It’s simple, and it normally produces parliamentary majorities,” says Louis Massicotte, a Université Laval political scientist who has studied electoral reform initiatives around the world. “The ambiguities of minority parliaments may fascinate intellectuals. But for the average folk in the street, a clear outcome is always better than a murky one.”

Continue…

Too many elections? Please.

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 3:36 PM - 35 Comments

Which is more annoying?

(1) Politicians in a democracy moaning about the inconvenience of having to audition for their jobs (that is, run for election); or

(2) The innumerate mantra, “four elections in seven years.”

Since No. 1 is merely par for the course among our grumbling political class, perhaps we should strive to erase the second from polite discourse. When Barack Obama runs for re-election next year, not a single American will complain, “two presidential elections in four years, that’s too many; as for two Congressional campaigns in two years… well!”

Yet that’s exactly the way the 4-in-7ers calculate, counting only elections and not the periods in between them. This is actually Canada’s fourth election in 11 years, since the campaign of 2000. That’s one vote every 2.75 years, not too far off the historical average of one every 3.6 years.

As for other parliamentary democracies, Continue…

The voting age: should it be raised to 50?

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 11:03 AM - 70 Comments

Does B.C. Liberal leadership candidate Mike de Jong think you should take Drano for heartburn? Does he think the Canucks would win more often if the Sedins were traded for magic beans? Anything’s possible. Literally anything.

B.C. teenagers should be able to vote in provincial elections when they are old enough to drive, Liberal leadership candidate Mike de Jong said Wednesday.

De Jong said if elected premier he would introduce legislation to lower the voting age to 16 from 18 in an attempt to interest teenagers in the democratic process before they graduate high school.

“What happens now is Grade 12 students leave and the vast majority of them never vote, or if they do, they are 40 or 50 by the time they get around to it,” he said.

Lowering the voting age could also help boost low voter turnout, he said. Only 51 per cent of 3.24 million eligible voters cast ballots in the 2009 B.C. election, down from 58 per cent in 2005 and 55 per cent in 2001.

The most natural next sentence, you’d think, would mention that the figure was a miserable 27% with the youngest voters, those aged 18-24. Numbers from the last couple of federal elections suggest that even within that 18-24 cohort, younger voters are less interested in voting; in the ’06 election, eligible voters aged 18-19½ (many still in high school) turned out less than voters aged 19½-21½, and those voters, in turn, were less likely to show up than voters aged 21½-24.

You’ll notice that those figures are irreconcilable with de Jong’s just-so story of eager schoolchildren instantly losing interest in voting when we open the gates and turn them loose for the last time. But who’d buy that anyway? Kids who leave high school either take up post-secondary education, and enter the most politically engaged space they’re likely to occupy in their entire lives, or they start earning paycheques—a moment at which government policy becomes frighteningly real, as if a monster in a children’s book had suddenly leapt off the page and started devouring the furniture.

De Jong is proposing a “solution” that helped cause the problem he is addressing: the Western world already essentially made a collective decision to sacrifice voter turnout on the altar of youth when it lowered voting ages to 18. It’s not clear why higher turnout ought to be considered a virtue in itself, but if it is, then that’s the dumbest move we could possibly have made. As André Blais observed in 2006, it’s hard to pin down the variables that influence turnout, but the effect of adding young voters in the ’60s and ’70s is pretty much the most unambiguous factor of all:

It is a well-established fact that the propensity to vote increases with age (Wolfinger & Rosenstone 1980, Blais 2000), and so we would expect turnout to be lower when the voting age is 18 instead of 21. Research that examines turnout in contemporary advanced democracies does not incorporate that variable for the simple reason that the voting age is now 18 almost everywhere (Massicotte et al. 2004), and there is thus no variation.

Blais & Dobrzynska (1998), whose sample of elections starts in the 1970s, do include a voting age variable and they find a relatively strong effect; their results suggest that lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 reduces turnout by five points. Voting age is also a key factor in Franklin’s (2004) study of turnout dynamics. He estimates that the lowering of the voting age in most democracies has produced a turnout decline of about three percentage points.

Leaving aside the Mike de Jong-bashing for a moment, what hardly anybody ever asks when discussing turnout is whether it might be rational for young people not to vote. An economist, after all, would start with the presumption that since they don’t, it must in some sense be rational for them not to. Political reporters and columnists, unless their names rhyme with Bandrew Boyne, do not tend to take an economist’s attitude toward social questions; but I would argue that these people have the strongest reasons of all to suspect that young people are right to re-enter the voting pool one toe at a time.

I was first put on a political beat at the age of 24 or 25. I had an education and plenty of information, but I was still at sea nine-tenths of the time, simply because I had only followed electoral politics for about seven or eight years (since the federal election of 1988, really). I didn’t know the personalities; I hadn’t amassed a store of anecdotes, tall tales, and gossip; I had no personal memory of what had been tried and untried, what policies and political strategies had a tendency to work or not to work, what promises are almost certain to be broken. I hadn’t been surprised a hundred times and just plain gotten things wrong another hundred.

There is no substitute for living through history. The older I get, the more I notice how much of my wisdom comes from simply having hung around a while and watching old friends climb the ladders of power and wealth. And the older I get, the less qualified I feel to have secure opinions about horserace politics, even though my profession requires me to feign omniscience. I defy you to find any political journalist who doesn’t feel the same way.

In this case, what’s true of an occasional political feuilletonist must surely be true of the ordinary citizen, who is (presumably) absorbing practical political knowledge even more passively, slowly, and intuitively. And if the vote is important primarily as a sign of humanity, or of being bound by the social contract, then there can be no argument for any voting-age limits; let’s have Fisher-Price design a ballot interface for infants. How could de Jong possibly object? What could he possibly say, even now, to some other thumbsucking pseudo-innovator who made the argument that the limit really ought to be 15?

Elections Canada renews hostilities with the Tories

By macleans.ca - Monday, December 13, 2010 at 1:46 PM - 51 Comments

Elections Canada has once again targeted the federal Conservatives for reprimand. Federal election officials say the party violated election laws by improperly accounting for the cost of running two regional campaign offices in Quebec. Instead of filing them as national campaign expenses, which Elections Canada says they were, the Conservatives split the $107,000 tab for the offices between 15 candidates in Quebec City and Montreal. According to Elections Canada, since the candidates made little or no use of the offices, they shouldn’t have been able to claim them as expenses. The party has complied “under protest” with Mr. Mayrand’s demand that it file a revised campaign financial return, adding on the cost of the regional offices. But it has also served notice that it intends to challenge the watchdog’s order in court. Elections Canada and the Conservatives are still involved in a legal battle over the so-called in-and-out scheme the Conservatives used in the 2006 election to pay for party advertising.

The Globe and Mail

Grant Kippen: Small, Positive Steps for Democracy in Afghanistan

By Andrew Potter - Saturday, December 11, 2010 at 10:33 AM - 7 Comments

The following article was written by Grant Kippen, past chairman of the Electoral Complaints Commission in Afghanistan. For those unfamiliar with Kippen’s pivotal role in the 2009 presidential election, check out John Geddes’ profile of Kippen from late 2009. He sent me this piece, and I post it with his permission.

*********

Slowly, important changes are happening in Afghanistan.

With all the focus this past week on the WikiLeaks release of US State Department documents it was not hard to overlook a significant milestone that occurred in Afghanistan, as the country continues its journey towards instituting the rule of law and building stronger, more independent democratic institutions and processes.  The event occurred on Wednesday, December 1 when the Independent Election Commission (IEC) released the final results for Ghazni province, the last of the 34 provinces to have the results from the September 18 Wolesi Jirga (parliamentary) elections certified.

The announcement brought closure to an election that was widely acknowledged as being exceptionally difficult by any international standards.  The degree to which fraud took place was on a par, if not greater, than what occurred in last year’s Presidential and Provincial Council elections, driven in large part by the intense competition amongst the approximately 2,500 candidates for the 249 seats in the Wolesi Jirga (Parliament).

While there are inevitably many more losers than winners in any election, the maxim is not entirely applicable in this instance, since the actions of the IEC have clearly signaled a win for the people of Afghanistan.   Despite coming under intense pressure from various actors, including the Attorney General’s Office and the Complaints Committee of the Meshrano Jirga  - who have no legal authority over electoral matters – the IEC resisted efforts to have them accept a political solution in Ghazni.  After careful deliberation and following the results obtained from their own investigations the IEC went ahead with the certification of the final results.

At Wednesday’s press conference the Chairman of the IEC, Professor Fazel Ahmad Manawi eloquently stated, “Our decisions are not driven by issues by tribe, ethnicity or language, but only by law.”

Afghans should take pride in the words of Chairman Manawi and the accomplishments of the IEC this year for their actions signal renewed hope for the long-term prospects of the electoral process and representative democracy in their country.  Donors should also pause to reflect on this achievement knowing that against the backdrop of the myriad challenges facing Afghanistan some positive progress is taking place.   It is not all doom and gloom in the country.

However, neither Afghans nor the international community should be lulled into a false sense of security thinking that work in this area is anywhere close to being completed.   In the short-term vigilance will be required in order to head off any potential retribution directed towards officials of the IEC or spurious attempts to re-write the electoral law, as was the case this past February

Electoral reform is desperately needed in Afghanistan in order to address the significant shortcomings that played out so publicly in the 2009 and 2010 elections.  This should be the first priority of the incoming Parliament (Wolesi Jirga) and the international community needs do everything it can to ensure that the mistakes made between the 2005 and 2009 elections are not repeated.

Now is the precisely the time for Canada to renew and redouble our efforts in this area by working with Afghans as they continue to build their nascent democracy.  Let’s use the momentum that the IEC has created so that the next elections are less fraudulent, more inclusive, credible and transparent than has been the case to date.
Grant Kippen

Past Chairman,

2009 and 2005 Electoral Complaints Commission

Afghanistan

Afghanistan: The leak isn't the story

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, December 2, 2010 at 5:23 PM - 17 Comments

Reporting from Afghanistan by Canadian media is focused almost entirely on Kandahar. But as the kerfuffle over ambassador William Crosbie and the leak about the contents of the wilileaks memos reminds us, what is going on in Kabul is in many ways more interesting. In particular, it is important to pay attention to what prompted Crosbie’s outburst in the first place.

Continue…

How to throw a party in Iran

By Erica Alini - Wednesday, December 1, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 2 Comments

BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

“There is no fun to be had in the Islamic Republic,” Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini once said. And in faithful adherence to its revolutionary founder’s command, Iran’s Islamic government has for decades punished such things as the mingling of men and women who aren’t relatives, alcohol, and female solo singers, with fines, jail time and lashes.

That’s why setting up a party—one with drinks, DJs and dirty dancing—has become a complex enterprise. Soundproofing the house to avoid attracting attention, for example, is fairly standard practice, says Mariam (not her real name), 23, an Iranian who now lives in Washington. Hosts, she adds, must also strike a difficult balance between inviting a restricted number of trusted people, while not leaving anyone out who could tip off the police in a fit of pique. Guests know they have to drink in one room, making it easier to collect and hide the alcohol, says a Toronto-based Iranian who asked to be referred to only as Ali. Girls sometimes set up another room for makeup and hairdos so they don’t catch the morality police’s eye on the streets. Above all, Mariam and Ali agree, there must be cash at hand for possible bribes.

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Conservatives pick up two of three by-election seats

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, November 30, 2010 at 12:05 PM - 5 Comments

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff is likely very relieved after his party managed to win one of the three seats up for grabs in Monday’s by-elections. Liberal Kevin Lamoreaux easily took Winnipeg North from the NDP, garnering 46.3 per cent of the vote to Kevin Chief’s 26.3 per cent. The Liberals weren’t so lucky in the closely-watched riding of Vaughan in suburan north Toronto, which they lost to the Conservatives’ star candidate, Julian Fantino. Fantino, the former Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner and one-time Toronto Chief of Police won with 49.1 per cent of the vote to Liberal Tony Genco’s 46.6 per cent. Vaughan — like most seats in the Greater Toronto Area — was considered a Liberal strong-hold until now. It was held by the Liberals for the past 20 years and was visited by Ignatieff four times during the campaign. CBC hockey commentator Don Cherry campaigned for Fantino in the riding while Liberal MP Ken Dryden made phone calls on Genco’s behalf. Meanwhile, the central Manitoba seat of Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette went to Conservative Robert Sopuck, as expected. He took 57 per cent of the vote. As Prime Minister Stephen Harper pointed out early Tuesday morning in a statement, it’s rare for the governing party to win any seats in by-elections. “Ours was the only party to make a net gain last night,” he wrote, adding that he sees the wins as an endorsment of the Conservative’s handling of the economy.

CBC News

National Post

Know your history

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 12, 2010 at 5:18 PM - 37 Comments

I’m only a chapter into it, but I’m going to go ahead and provisionally recommend Dynasties and Interludes, the new study of Canadian electoral history. If nothing else, by page 33 you will have come across at least one paragraph that contains more or less all the political analysis you will ever need.

To wit. Continue…

It doesn't matter, but it does

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 12, 2010 at 3:54 PM - 37 Comments

Ryan D. Enos and Anthony Fowler argue we vote for reasons beyond a belief that our vote will make an identifiable difference.

“I always vote.” “It’s a civic duty.” “Many have fought for our right to vote.” “Voting gives you the right to complain.” These were the types of answers we received. Most voters made no mention of issues, candidates, or policies. When asked about whether their vote would change the election results, most acknowledged that the chances were low. Nonetheless, many held out hope saying, “You never know” or “The election could be close.” It appeared that most voters had never even thought of the chances that their vote would matter until we asked them, and some admitted so. This observation tells us a lot about why people vote. If forced to think about it, most voters know that they won’t change an election result; but they don’t care.

Where was the youth vote?

By Andrew Potter - Friday, November 12, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 84 Comments

Joshua Roberts/Reuters

If there is one thing that captures the sad decline of Barack Obama’s place in youth culture, it is the changing nature of his treatment on YouTube. Forget about making “Yes We (Still) Can”—Will. I. Am was busy last month making R-rated videos with sultry R & B singer Nicki Minaj. Comedian Sarah Silverman was too preoccupied with tweeting about her menstrual cramps to encourage students to head back to Florida for “The Great Schlep 2.0.” As for Amber Lee Ettinger, aka “Obama Girl,” the viral-video hottie who had a famous crush on Obama back in 2008—well, she was last seen back in March, as a contestant on Shear Genius, a reality show about hair cuts.

No, in the days leading up to last week’s crucial mid-term elections in the U.S., the most prominent sign of the President in social media was a parody rap video called Head of the State, featuring an Obama look-alike called “Baracka Flacka Flames.” In the video, Obama was played by the comedian James Davis, who bragged about how “I brought you change, nigga” while a Michelle look-alike danced behind him, smoking and drinking.

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Promises, promises

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 4:40 PM - 180 Comments

What then are we to do with the entire notion of a campaign promise? I was there in September of 2008, the first week of that year’s election campaign, when Stephen Harper strolled into a fake media “breakfast” (he ate no food and drank only water) to announce that Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan should end in 2011. Coyne went ballistic. But at least he noticed that since the it-all-ends-in-2011 thing constituted a 180-degree turnabout from Harper, maybe another 180 was still possible. “You just never know.”

And indeed it was so. Though the prime minister has a hard time finding his voice on the issue this week, armies of leakers are suggesting on his behalf that the military mission won’t end in 2011, but that hundreds, even as many as 1,000, will remain to do training in Kabul. (Harper apologists, who are constantly having to figure out why his latest zig-zag was coming all along, will patiently explain that this will become a training mission, which is different from a combat mission. But it was precisely the notion of a training mission that Peter Kent ruled out in June when he said “there’s no wiggle room at all.” Now there’s room for a mambo parade.

We are left wondering, not for the first time, why we put the Conservative leader to the trouble of making election promises since he is only going to ignore them. Remember the $900 million diesel tax cut? Neither does he. Remember the promise never to go into deficit? Now you don’t have to. Remember six or eight carbon cap-and-trade schemes the Conservatives ginned up to block Stéphane Dion? Never mind.

Of course the laments on this can be multi-partisan. Chrétien’s vow to scrap, kill and abolish the GST. Gordon Campbell, RIP, on the HST. Some people are so livid over all this promise-breaking that they try to concoct schemes to hold politicians to their electoral vows with various penalties for infringement.

But what if the problem isn’t promise-breaking but promise-making itself?

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