Evidence of meeting #23 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was elections.
A video is available from Parliament.
7:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Thank you, Professor Lee. I know you'll be able to get more of that answer in under someone else's seven minutes.
Mr. Scott, for seven minutes, please.
7:25 p.m.
NDP
Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
I'm not quite sure what to do with one of the witnesses. I'll leave it for the moment.
Professor Mycoff, thank you so much for being available.
I, too, have had a chance to read your six-page piece called, “The Empirical Effects of Voter-ID Laws: Present or Absent?” I just want to make sure that I fully understand the import.
You just said that there's no direct relation and no evidence that voter ID cards affect turnout, turnout being your reference point, but throughout your piece, you're making comparative evaluations between other more significant factors and voter ID requirements.
You say that voter identification laws appear to be a much smaller piece than are other factors. You say, “While strict ID requirements have the potential to burden some members of the electorate, our analyses suggest that these numbers are small.”
You cite, “0.2% of potential voters claimed to have been excluded from voting due to ID requirements”. By the time you amalgamate that, those are real individuals, not just statistics.
You also say, “our question is whether these laws have significantly reduced turnout”.
Then you say, “Even if voter-ID laws do have pronounced empirical effects, once political interest is taken into account...”, etc., etc.
Can I just double-check that you want to stand by this claim that there's no direct relation, no evidence at all that there's some impact?
7:25 p.m.
Associate Professor, University of Delaware, As an Individual
If I might add, I said before that there was no main effect, right? It's not a particularly—
7:25 p.m.
Associate Professor, University of Delaware, As an Individual
—large driving factor in explaining voter turnout.
Now you can point to individual examples of individuals feeling as though they've been disenfranchised because of voter ID laws. We had an anecdote at the beginning of that paper about a member of the U.S. Congress who showed up to vote with a congressional identification. There was no expiration date on the card and she was refused the vote at that time. Now she was able to vote. She was able to go back and vote later. But those sorts of stories crop up during elections.
The previous member was asking about how individual people might not be aware of the new requirements. That's certainly a factor. If there is difficulty in acquiring the identification, that can affect individual people. But to say that voter identification laws are the driving factor behind whether someone's going to turn out to vote or not, I don't think that is true.
7:25 p.m.
NDP
Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
I think you might well be correct, but I just wanted to make it clear that it's different from saying there's no direct relation and no evidence.
The driving factor may well be the case that there are other factors, especially cumulatively, that might account for more. Our concern is that each individual has the right to vote, and that the particular impact in some groups, as you've said in your own language from a theoretical standpoint is:
the voters most likely to be negatively affected by voter-identification laws are those who are interested in voting, but do not know and or have the proper identification. This population may include groups such as first-time voters...or those whose IDs have recently expired,
—for example.
You also say, and I appreciate this, because I think it's a very balanced paper, and you're reporting your findings:
This is not to say that actually requiring a more strict form of identification is not on its face discriminatory; it is, and the laws deserve to be scrutinized. But, our question—
—your research question—
—is whether these laws have significantly reduced turnout.
Based on your analysis, you say no.
Our concern is there are multiple reasons we would be concerned with voter ID. Those include the fact that adding to the burden of any set of individuals, individuals on their own or groups of individuals, is itself a problem in our system, especially when there's no evidence of voter fraud, as opposed to other forms of gaming the electoral system to justify upping the ante in terms of voter ID requirements.
I just wanted to make it very clear that I have no objections to your conclusions. I just don't think they prove as much as I think my colleagues over there wanted them to.
May I simply ask whether you think this matters? You've emphasized, “we hypothesize that voters with higher levels of interest in politics are more likely to vote,”—I think that's probably a reasonable supposition—“and are less affected by voter-identification laws.”
Our concern is people who may not be all that engaged, who may only get engaged around election time. We have a system here whereby people can actually turn up on election day and vote, whereas in the U.S., I understand, unless things have changed, by and large you have to have registered in advance, if I'm not mistaken.
7:30 p.m.
Associate Professor, University of Delaware, As an Individual
Well, individual states have very different election laws.
7:30 p.m.
Associate Professor, University of Delaware, As an Individual
There are some states that have same day registration.
7:30 p.m.
NDP
Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
Great.
You say, “Thus, we argue that voters who are interested enough to register and turn out to vote would also understand and secure the necessary form of identification needed to cast a ballot.” The point is that in the U.S. system, if you do go over that hurdle and register, then already you're in the framework of seeking out the ID. That doesn't necessarily mean everybody in the Canadian context will be so motivated.
I'm wondering if you think that would be a difference that might create a different situation up here.
7:30 p.m.
Associate Professor, University of Delaware, As an Individual
Yes, in a comparative context, there will clearly be important differences. Here in the United States, where you have individual states determining their own election law by and large, we have a lot of variety in terms of how long between registration and election day. We have a lot of variety in terms of how people are identified on election day.
If you turn to a different system in Canada, there likely will be individual aspects of that system that will affect voting, that will affect the way people pursue registration, that will affect the way people pursue finding identification. Each system is in a sense unique in that way.
7:30 p.m.
NDP
7:30 p.m.
Conservative
March 31st, 2014 / 7:30 p.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
I have a few questions I'd like to ask you, Mr. Seidle, because in your closing comments you kind of hit a couple of chords with me.
One of them was the fact that you've been studying election laws, I believe you said, for over 30 years from a public policy point of view. Your comment was something to the effect that in those 30 years, never have you seen an election law of this nature being passed, or being forced through the House.
It seemed to me the reason you were making this statement was that only one entity is actually pushing this legislation through. To the best of my knowledge, there is no other political party outside of the Conservative Party that supports this legislation. We have the current and past chief electoral officers raising serious concerns and problems with the legislation and the need for it to have amendments. We've had academics both here in Canada and outside of Canada point to how bizarre this whole process is and the impact many of the changes will have.
I'm wondering if you might want to emphasize that aspect in terms of how important it is, when you change an election law, to build on some sort of consensus. That has always been my experience. I've been a parliamentarian for 20 years, at a different level, but locally in Manitoba it seemed there always was some sense of consensus when you changed an election law.
Could you provide more comment on that particular issue?
7:30 p.m.
Public Policy Consultant and Researcher, As an Individual
I'll be pleased to. I'll draw a distinction, though, between the support or otherwise of the Chief Electoral Officer and of other political parties.
On the latter, for decades it was the tradition and I would say probably an unwritten rule that changes to the Elections Act, even very major ones, were the subject of all-party consensus.
When the Election Expenses Act which came into effect in 1974 was passed, it occurred under a minority Parliament. The NDP held the balance of power. David Lewis was the leader at the time. All of this was the subject of my doctoral research. There were a number of very significant changes, including the threshold for access to candidate reimbursement, which were conditions of support that David Lewis and the NDP placed in front of the government.
If we flash forward, this began to break down, actually, under a Liberal administration, because in the face of the reforms that came into effect in 2004, the two parties that became the Alliance, as it then was, were opposed to the annual public funding allowances granted to political parties. I don't know how the vote proceeded at the time, but certainly in their public statements they were opposed.
The present government abolished these allowances, against the wishes of the other two political parties in the House of Commons. So in the last decade the all-party consensus tradition has been weakened.
Turning to the Chief Electoral Officer, it has been traditional that many of the amendments came from the reports of the Chief Electoral Officer, particularly on more technical issues: flaws or difficulties were noticed, he reported, and these were picked up as legislation was drafted, and so on. Usually the Chief Electoral Officer was consulted informally.
I realize there's a debate this time about the degree to which he was consulted on this. Apparently there was a meeting with Mr. Poilievre that lasted a half hour, and Mr. Poilievre got rather bored with what Mr. Mayrand was saying because he felt it was all in the public record.
Whether this is true, I don't know, but there certainly is a lot on the record, based on Mr. Mayrand's testimony, that demonstrates there's quite a bit of light between him and the sponsoring minister on a number of very important matters in the bill, whether in the enforcement area or concerning the commissioner or on the issue of vouching, and so on. There's a long list there.
I know of no other example, even dealing with less important amendments, in which there was that much difference between the Chief Electoral Officer and the sponsoring minister.
7:35 p.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
Yes. In regard to the party issue, this is a case in which there is no political party supporting the legislation, and that is truly unique, is it not?
7:35 p.m.
Public Policy Consultant and Researcher, As an Individual
Well, I think the government is actually a political party, so there is a political party supporting it. But there's only one party supporting it, and it has a majority, and as we all know, it's possible to do things with a majority that wouldn't have been possible three years ago.
7:35 p.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
That's right.
You made reference to the commissioner and noted that the office or that individual's powers are in fact going to be weakened. I'd appreciate your comments on this. We agree with that view wholeheartedly.
There's also the issue of compelling a witness, something that we felt was absolutely critical and something that Elections Canada felt was absolutely critical. I can't recall that you said anything specific in regard to the importance of Elections Canada's being able to compel witnesses.
7:35 p.m.
Public Policy Consultant and Researcher, As an Individual
No, I didn't talk about that. I was talking about the governance and the reporting and that sort of thing. This is an area that other people have more expertise in than I do, but bearing in mind that the Chief Electoral Officer has raised it as a weakness in the act and that there hasn't been an adequate response is certainly something the committee ought to take very seriously.
7:35 p.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
Okay.
The other interesting point that I thought you mentioned was in regard to the exemption of fundraising letters. I will give you an example. In essence, if I circulate a brochure to all 30,000 households in Winnipeg North and at the end of the brochure state that if they'd like to donate to my campaign, please send their cheque to such and such a place, would that in your opinion potentially qualify as exempting me from having to claim it as an expense?
7:35 p.m.
Public Policy Consultant and Researcher, As an Individual
My understanding is that the exemption only applies to people who have given money previously. That in itself adds to the complication. My position on this is that there's no evidence this needs to be exempted from the Election Expenses Act. In the 1970s, after the initial act was adopted, the parties got together informally—it wasn't an amendment to the act—and agreed that research should not be considered an election expense. They agreed that polling was a form of research.
7:40 p.m.
Public Policy Consultant and Researcher, As an Individual
Yes.
So for a number of decades, until the legislation was tightened about 10 years ago, polling was not an election expense. The exemption that was agreed to initially became more important over time as the expenses grew, and that's why I use the image of the Trojan Horse. We have another small Trojan Horse in front of us that could become a much larger beast over time as political parties get creative and as complications and enforcement come about.
I just don't see why this needs to be exempted. The spending limits are being raised—
7:40 p.m.
Public Policy Consultant and Researcher, As an Individual
—so there's a little bit more room there. What is the reason for this? It has not been stated. It has not been justified.