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Democracy
Why turnout drops and parties converge
By Kevin Potvin
Electoral abstention becomes more respectable the more people practice it
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The tactical dynamics of the Vancouver civic election mirror those of the US national election occurring eleven days earlier. Both are largely two party systems that generate pressure on both sides which works to edge them toward each other in policy and image in order to scoop as much of the other’s nearby uncommitted voters as possible. Restraining that impulse are each party’s far side flank of uncommitted voters which each party risks alienating into abstention by moving too far toward the other party.
There is then a calculus to arrive at the optimum position, a position where one extra vote gained from the other party risks losing one more vote to abstention. When both parties move to their own sweet spots, the dynamic would seem to produce a balanced system with two clear and distinct choices of roughly equal electable strength.
This system sounds like an attractive way of producing democracy through elections, and its the political science theory with which university departments have been planting square hats on pointy heads for generations.
There is, however, a fatal and overlooked flaw in the calculus, and the system, rather than producing two balanced yet distinct choices, instead produces two sides always moving closer to each other and almost always alienating an increasing number of non-voters on both their far sides. The flaw in the calculus reduces voter turn-out and narrows political choice, both of which serve to corrode democracy, not support it.
The flaw is revealed as voter turnout drops further than ought to be the case if voters were given clear and distinct choices. The recent Canadian federal election produced the lowest voter turnout in Canadian electoral history, at 58%. Two recent Provincial by-elections in Vancouver recorded shockingly low voter turnouts of around 28% each. The civic election may drop below 30% as well. If parties were looking for each of their own balances between scooping votes from each other and loosing votes on their far side fringes, turnout should not be consistently dropping.
The flaw comes about as the theory fails to acknowledge a key difference between a vote lost to abstention and a vote lost to the other party. When a party moves incrementally toward the other party’s position so that it gains one vote from the opposition while losing one vote to abstention, the calculus actually changes, for the other party has also lost a vote, lowering the threshold for victory by one vote. Thus each party may move again a little closer the other party, losing yet another vote to abstention on its far side. A party can therefore afford to lose two votes to abstention on its far side for every one vote it scoops from its opposing party. The balance of pressure on both parties, far from finding an equilibrium producing two distinct choices with a small and stable number of abstentions on both their far sides, instead systematically pushes the parties ever closer together, forming ever increasing pools of abstention on both their far sides. Turnout drops and distinctions between parties narrows.
The only remaining pressure keeping the parties somewhat apart is the prospect of a large enough pool of abstentions on either party’s far side threatening to congeal into a new party. That risk, however, almost always recedes, paradoxically, the larger the number of non-voters grows, since this produces greater social acceptance and personal justifications for what used to be regarded as a social responsibility on voting day. It is also generally unlikely that among those who have stopped voting, the work of organizing and creating a new viable party would ever be carried out. Non-voters are increasingly likely to view the whole system as unacceptable, rather than attempt to enter it anew. As parties move closer together giving rise to ever greater numbers of nonvoters on both their outside fringes, it is likely an upset of the whole system will arrive before the arrival of any new party threatening the status of the established parties. Parties are therefore free to move even much more closer to each other and to alienate yet far more of their opposite side voters before there are enough alienated voters on both sides sufficient to contemplate an overthrow of the whole system itself—the only real risk that parties run.
The left side on the Vancouver civic electoral spectrum took a major step toward its competitor, the NPA, in the lead-up to next week’s vote, and the NPA, sensing the major move to scoop their votes, tossed their incumbent mayor for a new candidate who also takes the NPA a major step closer to its competitor. Both of course have chosen to scoop a few of each other’s votes at the risk of alienating many more votes on both their far sides. There are traditional NPA voters threatening to stay home on election day, unable to countenance the more middle-of-the-road NPA team of Council and Mayoral candidates being offered this time around. And there are certainly traditional COPE voters who will stay home this time, unable to see themselves working with the very milquetoast left banner carrier, Vision Vancouver.
Meanwhile, the faces the two leading parties have chosen for Mayor candidates show virtually no distinction between them. Just as Olympic time keepers will add a decimal point to their measurements to reintroduce a sense of competition in sports where there is now virtually no difference between the fastest and the second fastest (does a guy who wins a foot race by one one-hundredth of a second really get to claim to be “fastest”?), party boosters will make fine distinctions between platforms and mayor candidates to peddle to media and voters. But the fact is, the range of democratic choice for voters in civic elections next week is between a bike-riding middle-aged moderate white businessman and a bike-riding middle-aged moderate white businessman and one party platform promising to address policing, homelessness and the small business economy, and the other promising to address policing, homelessness and the small business economy. There are differences, but you would need an Olympic stopwatch capable of measuring hundredths of seconds to notice them.
There is nothing for it. It is a system that must continue to converge to the middle and that must continue to produce ever lower voter turnouts until the system itself topples, which might never happen as non-voting becomes an increasingly accepted and comfortable choice the larger the community of non-voters becomes. Already in Vancouver, two leading parties battle over about 5% of the electorate, retain about 13% each of the electorate as reliable supporters, and have together alienated—without much fear of alternate parties arising or the whole system being toppled—fully 69% of the electorate.
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