Nova Scotia scores lowest in election fairness

National study by UBC prof rates provinces

By: Parker Barss Donham

HALIFAX: A political science prof at the University of British Columbia has compared the fairness of elections in Canada's ten provinces. Guess who fared the worst.
  In a study sponsored by the Institute for Research on Public Policy of Montreal (www.irpp.org/choices/archive/vol7no2.htm), Donald E. Blake evaluated four broad aspects of provincial electoral systems: the fairness of electoral maps; limits on who can vote and who can run for office; rules governing the financing of elections; and the fairness of election outcomes. Within each category, he looked at several factors.
  On item after item, Nova Scotia ranked at or near the bottom of the pack. According to Blake, we have the least fair electoral map, the most restrictions on who can vote, and the lowest percentage of women in the legislature. We are tied with Ontario for the most restrictions on who can run for office, and with Newfoundland for having the least control over election contributions.
  On campaign spending limits and on the use of public funds to finance campaigns, Blake rates us in the middle of the pack. The allocation of seats in Nova Scotia's legislature reflects the votes cast in elections less accurately than any province other than Alberta and New Brunswick.
  Taking all the rankings together, Nova Scotia has consistently the lowest rankings. No other province is close.
  This is the sort of academic exercise that drives experienced political partisans around the bend. "Ivory tower nonsense," you can almost hear them sputtering. "These eggheads shouldn't mess with a system they don't understand."
  Still, you have to wonder. Could the consistently low ratings Blake assigns to our conduct of democracy have any connection to the abysmal quality of government we've endured throughout much of the last 30 years?
  Any attempt to rate the level of democracy practised in a given province is bound to provoke controversy. Several of Blake's assumptions about what matters and what doesn't in evaluating election fairness are open to question, and at least in Nova Scotia's case, he makes a few glaring errors. He wrongly asserts we have no legislated schedule for redrawing riding boundaries - it's done automatically every 10 years - nor any mandatory disclosure of campaign contributions - everything over $50 must be revealed.
  Nevertheless, the drift of his findings is so consistent - consistently negative - where Nova Scotia is concerned, it ought to provoke debate about election reform in this province, if not across the country.
  Fairness of electoral maps: Blake employs several measures to demonstrate that the population of ridings in Nova Scotia varies more than in any other province. That is beyond dispute. Our largest riding has 2.4 times as many voters as the smallest.
  What's debatable is whether equal population is the sine qua non of electoral fairness. Nova Scotia made a conscious decision to create seats in which African Canadian and Acadian voters hold majorities or near majorities. More controversially, we make allowances for the difficulty of representing large, sparsely populated areas.
  The population of some Nova Scotia ridings varies from the average by nearly twice as much as the +/-25 percent limit implicitly set by the Supreme Court of Canada. By contrast, Australia, a country with similar geography, limits riding variations to +/-10 percent, and the population of US ridings rarely varies more than +/- five percent.
  Who can vote and run for office: Blake faults Nova Scotia for its six-month residency requirement, and for failing to allow election officials, inmates, and residents of mental hospitals to vote, but he makes little mention of our unwieldy restrictions on absentee voting, which likely affect many more people.
  Election financing: Although Nova Scotia places no limit on campaign contributions, or who can donate, it does, contrary to Blake, require disclosure of donations over $50. Combined with our limited public campaign financing, this would likely propel us to the middle of the pack among provinces. A $1,000 individual contribution limit and a ban on contributions from unions and corporations would be welcome, though.
  Fairness of election outcomes: Election outcomes are the ultimate test of electoral fairness. We rank last in percentage of female legislators, seventh in the degree to which party standings in the legislature reflect the votes cast for each party, and sixth in voter turnout. But we are first in the number of effective parties in the legislature, and third in the average percentage of seats that changed hands over the last five elections. Somehow, Blake conflates these rankings into a seventh place overall standing in proportionality.
  Of course, the ultimate assurance of proportionality would be proportional representation, a method of voting employed to some extent by every western democracy except Canada, the United States, and Great Britain.
  Now there would be a quick way to jump from last to first.

Parker Barss Donham lives in Kempt Head, Nova Scotia and covers Nova Scotia politics in Cape Breton and Halifax.

Posted: March 26, 2001

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