editorial

Why turnout matters - A response to the Toronto Star


Today’s Toronto Star headline is “The Voting Myth: Why high-turnout doesn’t matter”.

The first half of the article is factually incorrect and poorly researched. The second half is actually offensive.

In the first half, the author of the article explains that turnout statistics have become deceiving since our voters’ lists contain a growing number of duplications and errors. An inflated number of eligible voters automatically reduces the voter turnout figures.

But the facts don’t support this un-researched theory. In 2006, the City of Toronto worked with the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) and sent letters to 277,000 people who could not be confirmed as qualified electors. Citizens were requested to mail back a card to confirm that their name would be on the voters’ list. Only 9 percent responded. Over 250, 000 names were automatically removed from the voters list. It is very likely that a large percentage of those names were actually legitimate voters who did not bother to mail the cards back, or did not understand the request due to language barriers. So the numbers could end up being quite the opposite of the what the Star article suggests. With 15% of the names removed from the voters list, we are more likely to have an artificially high turnout statistic that hides the problem of political disengagement and exclusion.

Then comes the second half. The author states “What if it’s actually a good thing that some people don’t vote? Would it really be better if people who know little or nothing about the issues still showed up to cast a random vote?” (This is ironic, after the author has just proven that he knows little about voter registration.)

He then uses other people’s quotes to support his conclusion that poor people and immigrants are better off not voting. Or rather that they are perhaps intentionally giving up their vote so those who are more educated can make decisions on their behalf.

I could not believe that I was reading this in the Toronto Star in the year 2006.

The reality is this: the political disengagement and exclusion of lower income communities and immigrant communities has a devastating effect of the amount of attention and funding that those communities receive. The disproportionate amount of higher-income white voters has resulted in a homogenous City Council that reflects one single narrow demographic. The article supports having an ‘educated’ white professional government looking after a city of immigrants, which is nothing less than a rehash of the same arguments that have been used to justify endless forms of colonialism and racist viewpoints for too many years.

He quotes another expert: “No matter who wins, the garbage is still going to be collected, the TTC is going to run....”, etc. True, but if we decide to burn our garbage, is the incinerator going to be in Forest Hill, or Rosedale? The TTC might be running, but are the routes serving low-income neighbourhoods well enough? It’s revealing that the author doesn’t mention other municipal issues like housing, day care or other social services. Those are issues that might not be on the radar of professional ‘educated’ people who pay for their own private daycare and have never used a foodbank in their lives.

One ironic part of the column states that people who support low voter turnout for these reasons could be called “elitist swine”. Well, we didn’t say it ourselves, but we agree.

Our low voter turnout is not a reflection of poor people’s desire to taken care of by educated white folk. It’s a reflection of a society that has been unable to bridge the gap between haves and have-nots, has been unable to meaningfully incorporate new immigrants into society and continues to be be so alienating and exclusionary to those who are already marginalised, that many people simply give up and drop out. Toronto, this is nothing to be proud of.

The Toronto Star could be a leader on these issues. How sad that they published this on their front page the day before an election.