The $75,000 entry fee is much too high, and candidates should have been allowed to qualify through gathering signatures of support, not just by paying an exorbitant fee.

Candidates who are not MPs are not required by law to disclose all donations they receive because of loopholes — so the Party should be requiring this disclosure.

Candidates are also not required by law to disclose support they receive through volunteer labour because of loopholes — so the Party should also be requiring this disclosure so that anyone who does a favour for any candidate will be known and future conflicts of interest can be prevented.

Loans to candidates by themselves should have prohibited, and the amount of any loan should have been limited to the same level donations are limited ($1,300).

And people casting a ballot should have been allowed to vote “none-of-the-above” if they don’t like any of the candidates.

It is dangerous to allow political parties who are choosing a potential Prime Minister to set whatever rules they want for their leadership race — the above rules should be added to the Canada Elections Act, and Elections Canada given full powers to oversee leadership races.

For more details, go to Democracy Watch’s Voter Rights Campaign page

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News Release

Ontarians should not be surprised at low voter turnout in provincial by-elections

Changes needed to election timing, voting system, and voter rights and advertising to increase voter turnout in by-elections and general elections

Friday, September 7, 2012

OTTAWA – Today Democracy Watch called for democratic changes to Ontario’s election system in response to low voter turnout in the recent provincial by-elections.  Changes to educating Ontarians about their democratic rights, election dates, and ensuring honesty in politics would have led to higher voter turnout.

“Given that only 48.2% of eligible voters cast their ballots in the last provincial election, the lowest percentage in Ontario history, and we’re looking at approximately 26% turnout for Vaughan and 47% turnout for Waterloo in these by-elections, major changes are clearly needed to counter this threat to the provincial government’s democratic legitimacy.” Said Tyler Sommers, Coordinator of Democracy Watch.  “Unfortunately Elections Ontario and the Government of Ontario have failed to change anything so far, and Premier McGuinty chose dates for the by-elections when many people were on holiday, helping their children get ready for school, or moving for college or university, all of which likely hurt voter turnout.”

In addition to Elections Ontario properly educating voters about their right to decline the ballot (and disclosing declined ballot totals in election results), and the government changing the fixed election date to late October-early November (as with municipal elections), the provincial Election Act must also be changed to prohibit holding by-elections during the summer months and holiday periods, and at times when post-secondary students are moving, to ensure many voters are not essentially prevented from voting.

In addition, the most important changes the Ontario parties can make to increase voter turnout are as follows:

• pass an honesty-in-politics law that gives voters an easy, low-cost way to file complaints to the Integrity Commissioner, and gives the Commissioner the power to penalize misleaders (and requires MPPs who switch parties in-between elections to resign and run in a by-election);
• change the voting system so that the percentage of MPPs each party receives more closely matches the popular vote percentages.

These changes would give voters a reason to vote because they would know that voting for a specific party would mean a guaranteed result in terms of percentage of MPPs elected and promises kept.

In addition, if the parties strengthen provincial ethics, political finance, lobbying, open government, and whistleblower protection laws, voters will have more reason to vote because they would be more assured of good government no matter which party won.

“In addition to election dates often making it difficult for people to pay full attention to campaigns and get to the polls on election day, Canadians know from experience that they are not going to get what they vote for, and are likely to get dishonest, secretive, unethical, unrepresentative and wasteful government no matter who they vote for, and as a result no one should be surprised to see voter turnout dropping lower and lower,” said Sommers.

These problems exist in all the provinces and territories across Canada.  All of these changes should be made by the federal and provincial and territorial governments, and for their municipalities, before either mandatory or Internet voting are tried (because both of those changes will likely have serious negative effects).

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FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Tyler Sommers, Coordinator of Democracy Watch
Tel: (613) 241-5179
[email protected]
Democracy Watch’s Voter’s Rights Campaign

Set out below is a letter-to-the-editor by Democracy Watch Coordinator Tyler Sommers which was published in the the Hill Times on September 3, 2012

The clear need for Elections Canada to be given the power, and mandate, to audit federal political parties’ and riding associations annually, and to disclose all of its rulings and reports publicly, has been shown yet again by the fact that a media outlet (the Toronto Star) obtained secret documents recently that revealed that Elections Canada made a deal with the federal NDP to have it return more than $340,000 to various unions and other organizations that had paid the NDP excessively high amounts for advertising at conventions since 2006.

The NDP’s ad scheme should have been revealed by Elections Canada through an audit in 2006, and the deal Elections Canada made with the NDP should have been made public by Elections Canada as soon as the deal was completed.

Who knows how many other questionable schemes parties and riding associations have been involved in that have escaped anyone’s attention because Elections Canada does not do audits.

Elections Canada continues to hide how it has resolved almost 3,000 complaints received during elections since 1997, and has never even disclosed how many complaints it has received in between elections since 1997.  See details at: this news release

Democracy Watch filed an access-to-information request last April for every ruling Elections Canada has made since 1997, and is still waiting for a full response while Elections Canada continues to make excuses for the delay.

For more details, go to Democracy Watch’s Voter Rights Campaign page