Electoral Reform Committee on Oct. 25th, 2016

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

That's okay: not a problem. I'm a generous guy, what can I say?

You'll all have to be brief with your responses, I suppose, but I want to ask this of each of you. Some of you've alluded to it and/or mentioned it. I just want to see the positions that any of the organizations would have with regard to online voting and mandatory voting. I know I heard some allusion to it from some, but we haven't really got positions from anyone specifically.

I don't know if you want to start, Mr. Fitch, and then we'll work our way across.

[R. Bruce Fitch]

The online voting is, I can imagine, something that will eventually come. I made note of the computer glitches we had when we used modern technology in the last election. We didn't have the results until the next day on some of these. What was supposed to be an advancement turned out to be a real concern, because people were concerned that there was a rigging or that there was a problem with the machinery. Again, security's always an issue when you talk about online.

As to mandatory voting, people have rights and freedoms to choose to vote or not to vote. That's why, again, if we force them to vote, it starts moving into being heavy-handed and takes away that freedom of choice that we all find so important.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Be very brief, please. We've gone way over time here.

[Wanda Morris]

With respect to online voting, if we look at our members' behaviour in other areas, surprising numbers of seniors, and particularly elderly seniors, are not online, do not have access to computers, and are not comfortable with an electronic environment. Even those who are online are reluctant to make important transactions online. For example, many of them refuse to pay their CARP membership electronically—and it's such good value.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Wanda Morris]

With respect to mandatory voting, we had a few comments on that, but nothing that I feel I could share.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

We'll have to now move to Mr. Aldag, please.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

It will be Ruby first.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Okay.

Go ahead, Ms. Sahota.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Thank you to all the witnesses who are here today.

I've never actually, in all the months we've been doing this, asked a lot of questions about referendums, but you brought up some interesting points, Professor Lupia, so I want to get your opinion on this. You have quite a lot of states using an instant run-off method in the United States currently. In any of these states, have there been any local referendums held before the change to the system? We haven't heard all that much about the United States, since we've been comparing ourselves to other parliamentary countries.

If you could shed some light on that for me, that would be great.

[Dr. Arthur Lupia]

The true answer to your question is that I don't know, just because of the thousands of local jurisdictions we have. I don't know about all of them. I know that at the state level, there is a tendency, in half of the states, if you want to amend the state constitution, to go through a referendum. These types of questions would often be constitutional rather than statutory. It would be normal in half of the states to go through this process. They tend to be the western states. The older states do not have the referendum process for this purpose and they could make these types of decisions just through legislative action.

I'm sorry; there's variance at the state level. It's very decentralized. The Constitution of the U.S. gives very few instructions. It leaves it to the states to decide the manner in which they decide these things.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

A whole bunch of states, from what I can see currently, are using this alternative voting system now, but you haven't heard of any referendums at the state level regarding this. Is that correct?

[Dr. Arthur Lupia]

At the local level this is happening; at the state level—

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

At the municipal level: okay.

[Dr. Arthur Lupia]

We have tens of thousands of municipal governments. I'm just not familiar with all of them.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Okay.

We've been discussing referendums quite a lot on this committee and whether or not a referendum is necessary to give this scale of reform legitimacy. We are also considering the timing of a referendum. There has been some discussion about whether you have the referendum up front or whether you have it one or two election cycles after; even three has been suggested. You give the voters an opportunity to not prejudge the system but to have been through the system and then decide on whether it produces better results or not.

Have you looked into that aspect of referendum at all? What are your opinions on it?

[Dr. Arthur Lupia]

Worldwide, most referenda are one-off affairs. You announce a certain date, you have a vote, and then that's the end of it. In some cases, people will revisit it later on, but it's not a planned revisitation.

In some U.S. states, however, including Massachusetts and some of the older states, for some types of referenda you have two votes and you need a majority over successive elections. In Massachusetts, for a constitutional amendment, let's say you and I wrote a referendum and it got on the ballot. We'd have to get a majority in 2018 and then a majority again in 2020. That's I think for a small set of constitutional....

That's the type of thing where it's prolonged, but worldwide typically you announce a single date and then you have the vote at that time.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

I'm not saying you would need to have it up front and then revisit it once again later, although you could do that as an option, but how about just changing the system and then having the referendum after the fact?

[Dr. Arthur Lupia]

I'm not sure I understand the question, sorry.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Let's say the government were to put this to the legislature, it was voted on, we found legitimacy in that, we went ahead and made the reforms needed, and then, in order to really legitimize the process, we put it to the people after an election process cycle had taken place, whether one election cycle or two, and then the referendum were to occur.

[Dr. Arthur Lupia]

There's no precedent for that in the United States, but worldwide there are different types of referenda. The situation you've described is quite rare, that you enact the change and then ask for a vote later. What's more common is that you would have an advisory referendum. First you say that you're going to put this out to a vote, but we're not going to implement it yet and it's not going to count; we just want to get a sense of the people. That's a little more common as an alternative to the normal referenda where you vote on it and they implement it.

The case that you've described happens, but it's pretty rare. Once governments invest in a change like this, typically there's a reticence to put it out there and change it. It has happened, but it's really rare.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Thank you.

Do I have a little bit more time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You have about a minute and a half.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Perfect.

My next question is for you, Brigadier-General Corbould. I know you had suggested in your introduction some of the challenges that the armed forces will face when it comes to voting. You mentioned some of them, but I think you ran out of time and you said that in the question period you would revisit the other challenges that you think we can accommodate or look to change.

[BGen Gordon Dave Corbould]

I'll hand it over to Colonel Joshi, who monitored the last election.