In Quebec and in Montreal we have become accustomed to an apparent spiralling decline in the quality of public life with representatives who appear more-and-more useless getting themselves elected. Less and less people are turning out to vote and participation, especially in municipal and school board elections, is falling to pathetic levels.
Provincial and federal elections continue to have relatively high voter turnouts but this is largely because they are held on Mondays and workers get several hours of paid ‘holiday' to go vote. Municipal and school board elections are held on Sundays, with no paid time off for those who work on that day and the majority, who do not work on Sundays, have to make the effort to vote on their own time.
Generally speaking, in a democracy, it is the vocal minority (and not the silent majority) that sets the tone and direction for the selection and quality of the governments that get elected. This is reasonable. The silent majority is generally silent because it does not choose to have much to say, preferring to listen to the conclusions of the vocal minority. Meanwhile, the vocal minority generally takes more trouble to remain informed and involved and generally speaks out because it has thought things through and has more coherent things to say and more developed ideas to share.
Perversely, though, in a period of declining voter participation it is often the less involved and the less interested voters who are most likely to make the most effort to continue voting. I call these people 'the Olympians' because, rather like people who usually take no interest in sports but who, every four years, become briefly obsessed with the Olympics, many people who take little or no interest in public affairs attach themselves to pre-election publicity as a form of occasional entertainment. It is to entertain these people that the polls are conducted and for whom the usually depthless news coverage is produced and consequently it is no great surprise that the ‘content' tends to be rather superficial.
After two-months or so of entertaining pre-election viewing and reading going out to vote, while often knowing only the name of the party leader, is the logical conclusion – rather like voting for ‘Canadian Idol'. However, aside from the lazy, or really disinterested, the people most likely to give up on voting are those who are the most interested in public affairs. It is these people who know enough to get confused, or angry, or cynical or who conclude that ‘nothing is going to change' or that participation will, in any event, achieve nothing this time around or that ‘they are all just a bunch of scoundrels'. It is these people who create their own self-fulfilling prophesies by giving up on voting and giving over the playing field to the party publicists and their Olympian followers.
The Olympians do not get confused and since they represent a significant proportion of the voter population (about twenty-five-percent according to my estimation) they get to control election outcomes only when participation falls below fifty-percent. Consequently, it is not surprising that money and storytelling tend to dominate and determine low-turnout elections.
Normally, in municipal elections at least, the turnout is about fifty-percent which means that the voters with an ongoing interest in the process share a roughly equal voting weight with the usually disinterested Olympians. As a result, there is a usually a reasonably fair contest between ideas-and-issues and public relations. In my idealistic world at least, ideas and issues will usually prevail over public relations campaigns which will, in any event, usually attempt to mirror and re-package the predominant ideas and issues that are brought forward by the interested participants.
Since it is generally agreed that low voter turnout is a bad for the ultimate management of our public affairs, some people suggest that we could improve the quality of public life if we were to follow the Australian example and require and force people to vote – punishing them if they fail to do so. But why on earth would we want to force people who, even at election times, really couldn't care less for elections to determine the outcome of the process of choosing our leaders.
Some believe that some form of proportional representation would improve the quality of public life and, since it would allow new parties with broad but dispersed support to get some people elected, they are probably right. However, since the current 'first-past-the-post' system favours the existing, established parties, and it is they who have would have to change the rules, no innovation of this sort is likely in the short term.
What can be done to improve the quality of public life in our community. The answer is simple. People who care have to take the trouble to get out and vote and to make sure that they, and not the Olympians, determine the outcome of our elections. Otherwise the results will be determined by those who can buy the best advertising and PR campaigns and the rest of us will continue to complain about the declining quality of public life.
Stay informed, follow the issues, always get out and vote and the quality of public life will very quickly take a turn upwards for the better. If you don't participate, don't complain because it will indeed be your fault.
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