We addressed two more questions. First, does increased advance voting increase overall turnout? Second, who takes advantage of the opportunity to vote in advance?
On the first question, we think the evidence is rather clear. Increased advance voting opportunities give time-pressed individuals more opportunities to vote, and they give parties more opportunities to mobilize voters into these voting opportunities.
The American evidence, which we think is the most well developed, suggests that liberal voting laws and multiple opportunities to cast a ballot increase turnout, but there is a caveat. Increasing turnout often depends on an effort by parties to mobilize voters into these opportunities. In other words, increasing voter opportunities alone may not be enough; it may also require parties encouraging voters to take advantage of these opportunities.
Our objective then was to determine whether or not increased advance voting in Canada was increasing overall voter turnout. When we compared the increase in advance voting in federal constituencies between the 2004 and 2006 federal elections, we found overall turnout increased as well. In concrete terms, we found that for every ten additional voters who decided to vote in advance in 2006, nearly six of those individuals would not have voted otherwise.
In terms of the 2006 election, the 1.3% increase in advance voting resulted in a 0.7% increase in overall turnout. It had a modest effect, but it was a real one.
We concluded from this that further increasing advance voting opportunities in Canada is likely to increase overall turnout. It's extremely difficult for us to quantify the actual magnitude of the impact, but we are confident in saying we do not imagine the impact being greater than 2% or 3%.
Who is likely to take advantage of these greater opportunities to vote in advance? To ascertain this we considered evidence from the 2006 edition of the Canadian election study, which is a long-running survey of thousands of Canadians during each federal election. Through a statistical model we located the factors that differentiated those who voted in advance from those who did not.
To whit, older citizens were more likely to vote in advance than younger citizens. Those interested in politics were more likely to vote in advance than those who were not interested. Those who identified with a political party and/or were contacted by political parties were more likely to vote in advance.
We think these findings suggest two things. First, increased advance voting opportunities are likely to do little to close the turnout gap between the young and the old. Indeed, while also increasing overall participation, it will likely widen the gap in turnout between the young and the old.
Second, political parties will play an important role in determining whether extended voting opportunities lead to a significant increase in voter turnout. If the proposed changes are enacted, much of their effect will likely depend on whether parties can contact voters, inform them of these opportunities, and encourage them to take advantage of them.
We thank the committee very much for its attention to this report and questions of participation more generally, and we look forward to questions.