Voting , Vote Fraud and the Franchise in Canada
I found a number of conflicting bits of information on the internet, I suggest some factual corrections to frequently stated but misleading facts. The franchise has been extended gradually over history in Canada, but not at all evenly. Many Canadians do not excercise their franchise it seems, and the older voters are disproportionally represented. Approximately 87 percent of the electors who exercised their franchise in the 2006 general election chose to do so at an ordinary polling station on election day.
59% — The proportion of individuals in their 20s who had voted in at least one election.
71% — The proportion of individuals aged 30 to 44 who had voted in at least one election.
Voting , Vote Fraud and the Franchise in Canada
The first Secret Ballot
In 1874, legislation was passed adopting the use of the secret ballot in Canada. This was a pretty big deal in 1874. At Confederation, voting was oral and public in all provinces but New Brunswick. The necessity of a voter standing on a platform and declaring his preference to the world at large allowed plenty of scope for intimidation, at, before, or after the poll. Efforts to bring in the secret ballot were resisted as contrary to the "manly spirit of the British people" and as contrary to the realities of electioneering. An MP who defended hardnosed politics in the Canadian House of Commons in 1874:
Elections cannot be carried without money. Under an open system of voting, you can readily ascertain whether the voter has deceived you. Under vote by ballot [the secret ballot], an elector may take your money and vote as he likes without detection.Things were not much different in USA. Massachusetts was the first U.S. state to use the secret ballot. In the U.S., voting by secret ballot was universal by 1892, Kentucky was the last state to do so in 1891, when it quit using an oral ballot,but criminal prohibitions against paying people to vote for a particular candidate or not were instituted in 1925. In America there is still no right to a secret ballot . Federal District Judge Christine Arguello, who denied the existence of a constitutional right to a secret ballot. http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_21601455/federal-judge-says-no-constitutional-right-secret-ballot
Although the secret ballot was a part of the French Constitution of 1795, it only became common in the nineteenth century. Secret balloting appears to have been first implemented in the former British colony, now an Australian state, of Tasmania on 7 February 1856.
Women & the Vote:
Vote for [all?] Women
Women in what is now known as Canada could vote before Canadian Confederation if they owned property, but after Confederation in 1867 they were legally barred from voting. In 1917, women were allowed to vote if they met an exception for military personnel stationed abroad. "Bluebirds", nurses caring for wounded soldiers in Europe in World War I, were the first women to vote legally in Canadian federal election. In 1918, women had the same voting rights as men in federal elections. More about women's suffrage in Canada here: http://faculty.marianopolis.edu/c.belanger/quebechistory/encyclopedia/Canada-WomensVote-WomenSuffrage.htm
thanks to a long-standing conservative coalition, Quebec women could not take part in provincial elections until 1940 (though they could vote in federal elections earlier).
See a note below on Political Expediency and the vote of 1917.
First Woman Member of Parliament
In 1919 women were given the right to hold public office at the federal level in Canada, and the election of 1921 was the first federal election that included female candidates. Four women ran, and Agnes MacPhail was the only one elected. For 14 years she was the only woman MP. In contrast, 64 women were elected to Parliament in the 2006 federal election. The 41st Canadian Parliament will include a record number of female Members of Parliament, with 76 women elected to the Canadian House of Commons [2012].
Current Status:
For the first time in Canada's history, and exactly 90 years since the first female Member of Parliament strode into the green chamber, women make up a quarter of the 308 seats in the House of Commons. Most are from the NDP, whose 40 women make up 39 per cent of its caucus. That's the highest number of women in a Canadian federal caucus, but the percentage is lower than the NDP's figures from the 2006 election.
Women in parliament Worldwide View
The Economist online
First Woman Party Leader
Audrey McLaughlin was the first woman to lead a national Canadian political party. She became leader of the federal New Democratic Party in 1989.
First Female Senator:
In 1930 Cairine Wilson became the first woman appointed to the Canadian Senate, just months after the Persons Case gave women the right to sit in the Senate. It was 23 years before another woman was appointed to the Senate in Canada. Cairine Wilson was also Canada's first woman delegate to the United Nations.
A fluently bilingual mother of eight, well connected politically and from an affluent family, Cairine Wilson spent over 30 years in the Canadian Senate, and was best known for her support of the causes of refugees. Throughout her Senate career, Cairine Wilson also supported issues involving the rights of women and children, more progressive divorce legislation, and was a proponent of Medicare. See Note at end about the Persons case.
Homeless:
Homeless Allowed to Vote
In the 2000 federal election, for the first time homeless people were able to vote.
Prisoners:
Prison Inmates Get to Vote
In 2002 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the section of the Canada Elections Act that prevented inmates serving sentences of more than two years from voting in federal elections was against the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. All incarcerated electors may now vote in federal elections, by-elections and referendums. [unless they have been convicted of election-related offenses.]
Voting Age Reduced to 18
In 1970, a newly revised Canada Elections Act lowered the voting age and the minimum age to be a candidate from 21 years to 18.
Party Names on the Ballot
The name of the candidate's party was first shown on election ballots in 1974.
Canadians Outside the Country Can Vote
In 1993 for the first time qualified voters living outside Canada were allowed to vote by special ballot in their home riding.
----- Persons Case ----------
Appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada
For years women's groups in Canada signed petitions and appealed to the federal government to open the Senate to women. By 1927, Emily Murphy decided to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada for clarification. She and four other prominent Alberta women's rights activists, now known as the Famous Five, signed a petition to the Senate. The question asked was "Does the word "persons" in Section 24, of The British North America Act, 1867, include female persons?"
On April 24, 1928, the Supreme Court of Canada answered "no." The court decision said that in 1867 when the BNA Act was written, women did not vote, run for office, nor serve as elected officials; only male nouns and pronouns were used in the BNA Act; and since the British House of Lords did not have a woman member, Canada should not change the tradition for its Senate.
British Privy Council Decision
With the help of Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King, the Famous Five appealed the Supreme Court of Canada decision to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England, at the time the highest court of appeal for Canada.
On October 18, 1929, Lord Sankey, Lord Chancellor of the Privy Council, announced the British Privy Council decision that "yes, women are persons ... and eligible to be summoned and may become Members of the Senate of Canada." The Privy Council decision also said that "the exclusion of women from all public offices is a relic of days more barbarous than ours. And to those who would ask why the word "persons" should include females, the obvious answer is, why should it not?"
Political Expediency and the vote rigging of 1917:
In 1917, when it appeared that the Allies were losing the battle on the Western Front, and that volunteer enlistments would not meet the need for new Canadian troops, the Prime Minister, Robert Borden, brought in a conscription bill. Canadian legend has it that French-speaking Quebec was hostile to conscription, but Quebec's attitude was hardly unique. Conscription was an issue that might sink the government.
To avoid an electoral defeat, the Borden ministry forced through two acts that widened the franchise to include pro-conscription elements and expelled from the franchise people assumed to be hostile to the draft. Serving military personnel otherwise not qualified were given the vote (including female military nurses), as were, at home, "spouses, widows, mothers, sisters and daughters of any persons, male or female, living or dead, who were serving or had served in the Canadian forces." (p. 58) At the same time conscientious objectors, individuals born in an enemy country, and naturalized citizens whose mother tongue was that of an enemy country were disenfranchised. This resulted in tens of thousands of people losing the vote, out of an electorate of only a little over two million.
Finally, the new acts allowed a political party that received military votes (and the Conservatives were assured of getting the vast majority of them) to redistribute those votes to any electoral district where those votes might be useful.
Such blatant rigging of an election led to thorough reforms when the war was over (reforms which, to be fair, were introduced by the Borden government). The Dominion Elections Act of 1920 established a near-universal federal franchise for adult Canadian citizens, men and women. Women's suffrage had been making progress on the provincial level before 1917; the actions of the Conservative government in granting some but not all women the federal vote destroyed most of the existing arguments about women's unsuitability for politics. The electoral rolls of 1917 had included 2,093,799; the rolls in 1921, the next election, topped 4,400,000. The number of electors (registered voters) in Canada’s general election in 2008 23, 677, 639. The number of ballots cast in Canada’s general election in 2008 13 929 093.
A History of the Vote in Canada. Ottawa: Canadian Government Publishing -- PWGSC, 1997.
ISBN 0-660-16172-9
Continued Exclusion of the Franchise After 1920
First, the federal franchise was not quite universal. The Dominion Electoral Act allowed racial exclusions already existing in a given province to stand. This meant that British Columbia was able to keep people of Japanese, Chinese, or "Hindu" (East Indian) origin from participating in federal elections, and Saskatchewan likewise was able to prohibit voting by "Chinese." Aboriginal people in all provinces were not allowed to vote federally unless they gave up all rights they might possess as members of a band -- a step that almost none of them were willing to take. Also, resentment of the Doukhobor religious sect in British Columbia resulted in members losing the franchise in a revision of the Act in 1934, ostensibly because they were conscientious objectors.
During the interwar period a number of British Columbia Members of Parliament were willing to justify these exclusions. An independent MP named A.W. Neill was something of a star in these debates. In 1936 he argued against Japanese enfranchisement, saying a petition from the affected community was "sob stuff" and "claptrap." Similarly only "sickly sentimental" parliamentarians favored the enfranchisement of Doukhobors. During the Second World War, when Japanese-Canadians were expelled from British Columbia and interned elsewhere in Canada, Neill was happy to support a bill excluding the internees from voting in other provinces: "This is a white man's country, and we want it left a white man's country."
Extended Text Summary
The Evolution of the Federal Franchise
Most Canadians today take it for granted that almost all adult citizens have the right to vote. It is quite astonishing to realize that, in the country's early days, the number of people who were allowed to vote was actually much smaller than the number who were not.
It was a far cry from "one man, one vote." Initially only men could vote, and then only some of them. The right to vote and to be a candidate at a federal election was restricted to males over the age of 21 who met certain property qualifications. Excluded were all women, Aboriginal people and members of certain religious denominations. By the time the office of Chief Electoral Officer was established in 1920, the road to wider voting rights was well travelled, but the journey was still not complete. Disqualifications on racial and religious grounds, for instance, were not entirely eliminated until 1960.
Such disqualifications had their roots in the decisions of early provincial legislatures, and affected the federal franchise for decades. At the first general election after Confederation in 1867, only a small minority of the population qualified as electors in a country that consisted of four provinces, represented by 181 members of Parliament. During the late 1800s, the right to vote was not laid down in federal law; rather, the franchise laws of individual provinces were used to determine who had the right to vote. This had the effect of denying voting rights to certain groups, such as immigrants from Japan, China and India who were not of Anglo-Saxon origin.
In 1885, the Canadian Parliament established a complicated federal franchise, based on property ownership. The application of the rules differed from town to town and from province to province. In the same year, Aboriginal people living in certain parts of the country were given the right to vote.
The First World War brought the greatest changes to the federal franchise. In 1915, the right to vote by mail was granted to military electors in active service. In 1917, Parliament passed the Wartime Elections Act and the Military Voters Act. The right to vote was extended to all British subjects, male or female, who were active or retired members of the Canadian Forces, including Indians (as defined by the Indian Act) and persons under 21. Some 2,000 military nurses, the "Bluebirds," became the first Canadian women to use this right. Civilian men who were not landowners, but who had a son or grandson in the Canadian Forces, were also temporarily granted the franchise, as were women with a close relative serving, then or previously, in the Canadian Forces.
Surprisingly perhaps, this extension of the franchise was not a recognition of basic rights. Rather, the Unionist government of Sir Robert Borden was acting to give the vote to groups seen as likely supporters, including Canadians on active military service and their female relatives at home. The same legislation also took away the franchise from likely opponents, such as conscientious objectors, Mennonites and Doukhobours, and recently naturalized citizens from non-English speaking countries.
In 1918, the franchise at federal elections was further extended to all women 21 years of age and over. The following year, the women's suffrage movement made great advances and women became eligible for election to the House of Commons. In 1921, Agnes Macphail became the first woman to be elected to the House.
In 1920, a new Dominion Elections Act created the office of Chief Electoral Officer. From this point onward, the federal franchise would be established by federal, not provincial, law. British subjects by birth or naturalization were qualified to vote, but certain foreign-born citizens continued to be excluded until 1922. Now there were 235 seats in the Commons. For the December 6, 1921, election, approximately 4.4 million electors were on the lists. About 50 percent of the population was qualified to vote.
The year 1948 brought more changes. The last vestiges of the property qualification, still in use in Quebec, were abolished. The right to vote was extended to Canadians of Asian origin. A student could be registered in two constituencies: that of the family home and that of the university (but could vote in only one).
In 1955, spouses of military electors acquired the right to vote under the same Regulations (although they could still vote as civilians if they were based in Canada). The provision disqualifying conscientious objectors was abolished the same year.
A new Canada Elections Act, passed in 1960, removed further barriers to voting. Until then, registered Indians living on reserves had been specifically disqualified, although Inuit people had been qualified to vote since 1953. The right to vote in advance was extended to any elector who expected to be absent from his or her polling division on election day.
A decade later, in 1970, a revised Canada Elections Act lowered the voting age and the age of candidacy from 21 years to 18. The right to vote was restricted to Canadian citizens, although British subjects eligible to vote as of June 25, 1968, kept their right to vote until 1975. The new Act also introduced a system of proxy voting for fishermen, seamen, prospectors and full-time students absent from their electoral districts on both election day and the advance voting days. The right to vote in advance was extended to persons with disabilities, and level access was required for all advance polling stations.
With the extension in 1977 of the right to vote by proxy to airline crews, lumber and survey teams, and trappers, yet more barriers were removed.
In 1982, the new Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms embedded in the Constitution the right of all citizens to vote and to be a candidate, at the same time opening the door to court challenges based on discriminatory voting regulations.
The adoption of the Charter ushered in further changes. About 500 federally appointed judges cast federal ballots for the first time in 1988, after a section of the Canada Elections Act prohibiting them from voting was ruled unconstitutional. Another court ruling that year enabled persons with mental disabilities to vote, and Parliament removed the disqualification from voting for inmates serving sentences of less than two years.
In 1992, Parliament amended the Act to improve access to the electoral system for persons with disabilities. The requirements included level access at all polling stations. Mobile polling stations were introduced. The following year the electoral legislation was amended again to enable special ballot voting by any elector who cannot go to a regular or advance poll. The special ballot is now used by students away from home, travelling vacationers and business people, incarcerated electors, and those temporarily living outside the country, including members of the Canadian Forces and public servants.
On October 31, 2002, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the section of the Canada Elections Act that prevented inmates serving sentences of two or more years from voting contravened the Charter. All incarcerated electors may now vote by special ballot in federal elections, by-elections and referendums regardless of the length of the terms they are serving.
The suffragette movement, the First World War, the lowering of the voting age and the elimination of racist policies have all played significant roles in bringing the right to vote to all adult Canadians.
Now all Canadian citizens 18 years of age and older are qualified to vote, with the exception of the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, who must remain impartial at all times.
At the most recent federal general election in 2004, out of a total population of almost 32 million people, the names of about 22.5 million were on the final lists of electors. Almost all of the remainder were either not Canadian citizens or were under the age of 18. A total of 61 percent of all electors exercised the right to vote.
It is clear that the path to today's very wide franchise has not always been a smooth one; over the years, the advances have sometimes been offset by regressive moves introduced to meet the circumstances of the times. The adoption of the Charter has been the single most effective trigger for the removal of the last vestiges of discrimination.
With advance voting, universal access to the special ballot, election day registration, and an insistence on level access at polling stations, virtually all adult Canadians now have both the right to vote and the means to do so.
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