Further Musings On Alberta's Election Results

I've been doing quite a bit of musing about last week's very disappointing election in Alberta.

Just over 40% of Albertans voted - and half of those voted for the status quo. This speaks volumes to me. It explains why after the previous election I couldn't find anyone who would admit to voting for the incumbent - they didn't, in fact, they didn't bother to vote period!

Similarly, I suspect I'll find the same thing in a year or so - nobody will remember voting for Ed Stelmach either. After all, if the PC's took 53% of the popular vote, and that "popular vote" number was based on 40% of the electorate, I've got better than a 75% chance that any random person didn't actually vote for the government.

Numbers are easy though, and I can bitch and whine about how brain dead it is that 53% of the popular vote translates into 86% of the seats all I want, but that doesn't address the real issue - that over half of Albertans can't even be bothered to take an hour out of their oil-boom addled day and actually put an "X" on a slip of paper. I think I'd be a lot less bothered by the results had 80% or more of the electorate actually turned out to vote.

In fact, tinkering with the system in small ways isn't going to address the fundamental problem - even something as dramatic as a Proportional Representation system isn't going to solve anything on its own.

Alberta's voters simply can't find a way to engage in the politics of the province. There's a good reason for this - after thirty some years of single party rule, and since Lougheed stepped down, steadily declining voter turnouts. It's completely understandable when votes for anything other than the PC's seldom result in a victory for anything other than a PC - only the hardiest are going to stick to their guns and continue to vote against the apparent tide.

Worse, as we have scraped away at the situation, we find that the riding distribution is borderline on what in the US would be called "gerrymandering", providing a disproportionate weight to votes in rural ridings. (The last re-evaluation of riding boundaries was done just before new census data was published, forcing the use of data that is now over a decade old. Then it comes out in the election that the Premier's office has been taking an overly active hand in selecting the Returning Officers. This latter issue should have caused more of an uproar than it did, as it calls into question the objectiveness of supposedly non-partisan people.

It seems to me that this issue needs to be addressed on multiple fronts.

Problem #1: Disengagement

Let's be honest with ourselves - Alberta's voters are seriously disengaged. In many ways to the point that they simply can't be bothered to either vote or even think about the issues.

Fair enough, I can get this - when day to day life is stressful enough - and Alberta's boom has made this one of the highest stress locations to live - there's precious little time to think about the "big picture". Far too many people I've talked to don't vote simply because they cannot see how the different levels of government affect their daily lives.

Problem #2: Peer Pressure

One thing that surprised the heck out of me this past election was the amazing amount of peer pressure to vote for the governing party. The reasoning went one of two ways - either voting "conservative" was just not done; or "why would you throw a vote away?".

This is a huge problem, as it says that we are not celebrating the diversity of opinion that makes the democratic process work.

Problem #3: Systemic Bias

As the riding boundaries and the selection of Returning Officers issues suggest, the PC's have become entrenched both politically and bureaucratically - and they don't see anything wrong with this. The perception of bias will tend to further yield to the "my vote doesn't matter" problem.

Problem #4: Lack of Understanding

I would venture to guess that "civic literacy" (understanding of electoral and government processes) is at an all time low in Alberta these days. I would imagine that serious understanding of how things are intended to work exists primarily in the hands of academics and political junkies like this writer. Most people simply can't be bothered to figure it out. (Granted, reading legalese isn't something most people do for fun, either!)

There are solutions, but they have to exist and function on multiple levels, and are not short term "quick fixes" that politicians like.

(1) Education

The politics of our country must become a central part of the educational system. We have steadily eroded the amount of time spent on the subject of government over the last thirty years, and today's high school graduates often have little or no understanding of the political environment we have or how it works.

If we make a conscious effort to make our government important for our youth, they will become active and engaged voters as adults.

(2) Electoral Reform

I don't think that this is strictly necessary per se - a higher level of voter engagement would produce a satisfactory result in the existing system. However, the education subject is one that will be a minimum of a decade in producing measurable changes in voter habits, and the level of disengagement in Alberta is such that the optics around the current model are so poor that a re-design is called for.

(2)a. Take The Politicians Out Of Riding Boundaries

I'm unimpressed (to say the least) with the mucking about that our politicians have done trying to manage riding boundaries. Anyone currently sitting as an MLA is going to be unwilling to change their riding boundaries much unless there are specific areas that are hostile to them. As far as I'm concerned, the riding boundaries must be established by a commission whose members are given a mandate to equitably define the riding boundaries on strict guidelines.

(2)b. Remove Elections Alberta From The Control of the Premier's Office

Whether or not the returning officers did anything wrong is immaterial here. The Returning Officer job has to become something that is seen to be non-partisan. If that means making the R/O jobs in each riding a random selection process similar to Jury duty, then so be it.

(2)c. Move to a Proportional Representation Model

This may mean redesigning the Legislature, or perhaps creating a "Senate-like" body that is run on a P/R basis. The whole point here is to dramatically change the dynamic that allows a party that gets ~20% of the available vote to take 80% of the seats available.

First Past The Post (FPTP) isn't necessarily that bad, but with a high level of voter disengagement, it develops serious problems where the government sitting in Edmonton does not in fact represent the broader will of Albertans.

I will argue that the optics in the current environment are so bad that a radical change is needed to convince the disengaged voter that it is in fact time to re-engage. Some form of P/R is dramatic enough to catch public attention.

In closing, I do not believe that any one of these will make a significant difference, but these are starting points in a long-range plan to re-energize our electoral system which is currently on the verge of collapsing (if it hasn't already) into the kind of pseudo-democracy that we accuse leaders in other countries of being. Some of this is "window dressing", intended to plant in the public mind the notion that change is happening; other parts are longer term, and will only start to have an impact as the generation that will be born to those now in high school comes of age.