More on Voter Turnout

More on Voter Turnout

One of this blog’s faithful readers suggests that the end of door-to-door enumeration and the centralization of the voters’ list at Elections Canada is a significant cause of declining voter turnout.

This is a persuasive explanation to me for three reasons:

1)      Door-to-door enumeration was a personal face-to-face reminder to many people that there was an election on, when it was going to be and where the person enumerated should vote. The practice was to post the voters’  list for each poll at a prominent location in that poll, allowing persons who had inadvertently been left off the list to become aware of the fact and get their names placed on the list at revision.

2)      Door-to-door enumeration has to produce a more up-to-date list than the central list maintained by Statistics Canada which is mainly updated by information provided once a year on people’s income tax returns. When people move after filing their tax return they are likely to be double counted at their new address (by applying to vote at an advance poll or on election day)and at their old address . People who die after filing their income tax return may also remain on the list.  These flaws in the national register of voters inflate the number of voters on the voters’ list, thus reducing measured voter turnout.  For example, Elections Canada  adjusted the turnout rate for the 2000 federal election campaign from the initially reported 61.2% to 64.1% after the National Voters’ register was purged to take account of deaths and duplications resulting from moves. Elections Canada has not reported doing similar adjustments for elections after 2000.

3)      In 1997, the last federal election with a door-to-door enumeration in most provinces, the voter turnout was 67.0%. It fell to 64.1% (post-revision) in 2000. It has not exceeded 65.0% since 1997. This does not prove that the end of door-to-door enumeration reduced voter turnout, but the correlation is consistent with that argument.