Friday, September 21, 2012

OTTAWA – Today, Democracy Watch launched a national letter-writing and petition drive on Change.org calling for politicians across Canada to pass effective laws to stop election fraud robocalls, and to strengthen enforcement of election laws.

“Canadians have heard lots of talk from politicians saying they are concerned about false election robocalls and enforcement of election laws, but it is clear politicians need to be pushed and so we are making it easy for people across the country to add their voice to the call for politicians across Canada to make the changes needed to clean up and ensure our elections are fair,” said Tyler Sommers, Coordinator for Democracy Watch.

False robocalls were received by tens of thousands of voters in more than 230 ridings during the spring 2011 federal election, and were also used to mislead voters in some recent provincial elections.

Last March, federal politicians unanimously supported Democracy Watch’s proposal to pass a law quickly to stop false election robocalls, and the NDP’s motion to do this set a deadline for this fall for the federal Conservative government to introduce the changes.

Measures to make false robocalls illegal and essentially impossible will help, but there are also enforcement problems.

Elections Canada has failed to disclose the rulings it has made on more than 3,000 complaints it has received since 1997, and has recently made some very questionable rulings.  Elections Canada must be required to disclose every ruling it makes to ensure that it proves it is enforcing the law fairly and properly (and election agencies across Canada must also be required to disclose all their rulings).

Democracy Watch is calling on Canadians to send a letter and to sign the petition that both call not only on federal politicians to introduce and pass a law to stop false election robocalls and strengthen enforcement, but also for politicians in every province and territory to pass similar laws that apply to their provincial, territorial and municipal elections.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

Tyler Sommers, Coordinator of Democracy Watch

Tel: 613-241-5179

Email: [email protected]

Internet: http://democracywatch.ca

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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