In the end, people don’t give a damn about their city. Montreal administers a budget of $ 7 billion, but just over a third (38.29%) of people come to choose their mayor.
It is not better in Longueuil: 33.1%.
Laval: 28.8%.
Trois-Rivières, Saguenay, Gatineau: all around 35%.
Quebec, where a three-way fight was raging, fell below 50% (45.2%).
We are used to asking ourselves why people do not vote; to see such miserable participation rates, we will have to ask ourselves: who are these people who still vote?
However, it does not require an immeasurable effort. It happens on Sunday. Close to the house. It takes 10 minutes. You can do it for two days the week before. Or even by post.
It is customary to repeat that the city is the “government of proximity”. But this is the level where people vote the least.
What is more concrete, more “close to the world” than an annual tax bill, a badly de-iced sidewalk, a bus or compost collection schedule, a change in zoning to build a tower or police departments?
Bof! responds the elector.
I could evoke the ancient tradition of corruption, which flourished for decades in Laval and elsewhere in the face of the most sublime electoral indifference. It was ultimately the police who fired Mayor Gilles Vaillancourt and a few other scoundrels.
But let’s not go that far. Let us think about the choices that a municipal council must constantly make that directly affect our lives, influence our bank account, have environmental, economic, social repercussions …
Isn’t that worth a little walk every four years?
Bof! hisses the voter.
Everywhere the same
The phenomenon is not from Quebec. Major Canadian cities are located in the same waters as Montreal. After the turbulent years of Rob and Doug Ford, Toronto saw a turnout of 41% in 2018. In Vancouver that same year, only 39.4% of people voted.
In the second round of the municipal election in Paris last year, the turnout reached just 36.7%. It was in the midst of a pandemic, you will tell me, and in the previous election, nearly 60% of Parisians had voted.
But a week before Montreal, New York chose its mayor with barely 20% participation.
Why ?
The tough job of voting
Political scientists and the American media publish extensively on voter turnout, which is traditionally pathetic at all levels in the United States.
In particular, the difficulty of voting for the average American is stressed. You have to register yourself on the electoral list. The ruling party controls the partisan division of constituencies (gerrymandering) and, in several States, this gives absurd designs intended to make the vote of the opponents as less harmful as possible, therefore relatively unnecessary. Much has also been made of the laws passed over the past year in many states to make voting more complicated, and to “suppress” the right to vote in practice for the poorest and minorities.
But we still have to take an interest in public affairs. None of this applies here. The state puts you on the list. Sends you a card with instructions and almost takes you by the hand to send you to vote. Advertising campaigns flood the media.
Still… people vote less.
” It’s boring ”
We cannot say that there was a lack of stakes or ideological divisions. Maybe in Laval, but certainly not in Montreal and Quebec. And when it was not visions of town planning (tram, third link) that clashed, they were still highly publicized personalities.
No big deal: more than half, if not two voters out of three of the largest cities in Quebec, did not care.
There will be lamentations when cities try to balance their budgets by pretending to avoid a property tax hike – good luck everyone.
But that won’t shake the voter.
What should be done ? Impose fines on non-voters, as in some European countries, to inflict a bit of political citizenship on the citizen? Something to get beaten in the elections! The countries that have such measures, by definition, are those where the participation rate is already enviable.
Hold the municipal elections at the same time as the provincial ones, where people vote a lot more? May be. The Americans have multiple ballots, as long as the Canadiens’ third period in November. Their participation rate is not good.
It often takes a scandal. When the non-voter realizes that his city is run by oddballs or bandits, or that the town hall is going adrift, it excites his municipal emotions for a time. After… blah. The municipal brain is once again becoming a political dormitory suburb.
The truth is that it is not spontaneously super interesting, to look at the stakes of the water tax nor most of the debates in the council. Besides, we have our lives to manage, right? It is indeed a fundamental right to find it boring and not to want to know anything.
And this is what makes democratic confiscations of town halls possible, as the Charbonneau commission reminded us. Or what makes a city run badly. Or against the interests of the majority.
It’s true: a city where people don’t vote can also be very well administered; what we take for indifference is perhaps a lazy index of citizen satisfaction. Conversely, incompetent people can be elected even with a high turnout. But maybe not twice. And at least the voter will feel responsible for the outcome.
It is this very responsibility that we refuse by voting so little: it is none of “my business”, and in any case, my vote will not change anything.
Perhaps this will be another subject to put in the civic education course …