{"id":7369,"date":"2014-07-09T23:18:54","date_gmt":"2014-07-10T03:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=7369"},"modified":"2014-07-17T01:05:45","modified_gmt":"2014-07-17T05:05:45","slug":"politics-as-usual-voting-quorum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/politics-as-usual-voting-quorum\/","title":{"rendered":"POLITICS AS USUAL: Voting Quorum"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas<\/strong><\/p>\n

There were four federal ridings at stake last week. A number of resignations had resulted in four vacancies at the federal level. The Ontario vacancies were filled by Liberal candidates and the Alberta vacancies were filled by Conservatives.
\nWhile some pundits focused on what the results meant to the various parties, others focused on the election itself.
\nBy-elections are notorious for low turnouts. People just do not get jazzed up about by-elections. However, even by the low bar set for such electoral contests, this one was very very low. As a result, there is a more fervent call for some kind of revamp of the electoral process. Even the most casual observer of politics has got to be appalled at the voter turnouts in Alberta in particular \u2013 less than 15 percent.
\nThat means that 85% of the riding\u2019s electoral population decided that they simply couldn\u2019t be bothered to care who represented them in Ottawa.
\nWe don\u2019t have much to crow about in Ontario either. Trinity Spadina had a turnout of just 21 percent, while the Scarborough-Agincourt riding was a bit higher at 27 per cent. Not even a quarter of the eligible voters bothered to show up.
\nThat is, in a word, shocking.
\nI know the extremely low voter turnout was a result of a confluence of factors, not the least of which was the fact that the election was held on the Monday of an extended long weekend, but not everyone was on vacation.
\nSo how does one explain a 15% turnout? How is that good for democracy? Worse still, what do you do about it?
\nI read a letter in the Globe by someone who had a rather brilliant suggestion: a voter quorum. While he didn\u2019t get into the particulars, his suggestion was concise: an election should not be considered valid if the turnout does not meet a specified target \u2013 or quorum.
\nThat makes infinite sense to me.
\nLeaving aside the \u201chow\u201d of voter quorum, I think the why of voter quorum warrants exploration.
\nYou cannot have a meeting without quorum. Why? Because the decisions made at the meeting will not be considered valid if the requisite number of members are not present to ratify a decision.
\nIf you didn\u2019t have quorum, then decisions could be made by a very few people \u2013 or even one person. If that\u2019s the case, we might as well go back to the days of benign despots and do away with the legislature all together.
\nVoting is one of the most important decisions we make as citizens. Shouldn\u2019t we ensure that the method by which that decision is made is fair \u2013 or at least makes sense?
\nThink of it this way: if the Legislature had only 20% of its members present \u2013 or around 62 based on current ridings \u2013 and of those present 50 percent plus
\n1 decided to bring back the death penalty, would you accept that decision?
\nWhy would we accept the decision to elect a representative based on a majority of only 20 percent of voters?
\nWe shouldn\u2019t.
\nWe, as a country, believe in the principle of majority decision making. We believe in a first-past-the-post voting system \u2013 where the candidate with the majority of votes earned, wins.
\nFor the system to function properly, we need the \u201cmajority\u201d to be defined.
\nIs it 50 plus 1 of those voters that bother to show up, or is it 50 plus 1 of the electorate? Or is it some sort of amalgam of both? Should there be a threshold voter turnout required in order for an election result to be considered valid? I say yes.
\nI think that this is a very important democratic issue that needs to be discussed and resolved. We cannot continue on as things are with false majorities due to extreme voter apathy.
\nScarlet O\u2019Hara may \u201cthink about that tomorrow\u201d, but I don\u2019t think we have that luxury.
\nUntil next week, stay informed, stay involved because, this is \u2013 after all \u2013 Our Town.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas There were four federal ridings at stake last week. A number of resignations had resulted in four vacancies at the federal level. The Ontario vacancies were filled by Liberal candidates and the Alberta vacancies were filled by Conservatives. While some pundits focused on what the results meant to the various parties, others […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-1UR","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-25 11:56:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}