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Invalid Voting in an Apolitical and Low Turnout Context: a Case Study of One Canadian Municipal Election

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Invalid Voting in an Apolitical and Low Turnout Context: a Case Study of One Canadian Municipal Election Title: Invalid Voting in an Apolitical and Low Turnout Context: A Case Study of One Canadian Municipal Election Authors/ Auteur(e)s Sandra Breux* Professeur-chercheur Institut National de Recherche Scientifique Centre Urbanisation Culture et Société 385, rue Sherbrooke Est Montréal (Québec) H2X 1E3 Canada Email : [email protected] Tel : 514-499-4059 * Auteur à contacter / Corresponding author Jérôme Couture PhD Candidat Assistant de recherche Université Laval and INRS-UCS 385, rue Sherbrooke Est Montréal (Québec) H2X 1E3 Canada Email : [email protected] Tel : 514-499-4059 Abstract Canadian municipal politics has several distinctive features: 1) a lower voter turnout than other levels of government, 2) apoliticism of political parties, 3) a high rate of invalid votes. This study seeks to understand the reasons for the high invalid vote rate in Canadian municipal politics. For this, we test three commonly-accepted hypotheses on invalid voting for the city of Montreal using electoral and socio-demographic data published by the city in 2009. The results show that the institutional complexity and social structure of a given borough are likely to influence invalid voting. The analysis moreover highlights the need to measure the cost, in terms of effort and difficulty, for voters to obtain information at the local level. Keywords: invalid votes, low turnout, municipal election, Canada, non-politicised context 1 Introduction The presence of invalid votes, that is to say, blank or spoilt votes, is a constant in Western democracies (Uggla, 2008). However, invalid voting has been the subject of a relatively small number of studies, in particular concerning the municipal level (Trounstine, 2009; Faure, 2009). Yet, it is at this level that invalid voting is generally highest, even if the overall voter turnout there is often comparatively lower. For Reif and Schmitt (1980), these phenomena, alongside a drop in support of the power in place and strategic voting, are two of the main attributes of so- called “second-order” elections. According to these authors, voters consider these types of elections to be less important than others as they usually involve less high-stake issues. Thus, compared with national elections, municipal elections are seen to concern issues of lesser importance. A high percentage of invalid votes would therefore reflect this lower significance of municipal elections. However, this classification of election types assumes that national elections are connected to the other types of elections and that, therefore, voters’ range of choices is essentially the same at the different levels of government. In that sense, some speak of a “nationalization” of elections at the municipal level (Parodi, 1983; Parodi, 2004). However, in North America, and more specifically in Canada, there is no direct link between the municipal and higher levels of government. For this reason, the theory of second-order elections does not adequately explain the presence of invalid voting. In fact, in the provinces with partisan municipal systems, as is the case with Quebec, municipal political parties have no affiliation with the other levels of government and can be characterized as apolitical (Bherer & Breux, 2012). In such a context, voters cannot express their approval or disapproval of the upper levels of government through their votes in municipal elections. In Quebec, invalid voting in municipal elections is prevalent. For example, in the 2009 Montreal municipal elections, the number of invalid votes was 58,362,1 compared to 53,749 rejected votes in the 2012 Quebec provincial election and 51,430 in the 2011 federal election. This means that the number of invalid votes in the 2009 municipal elections in Montreal was greater than those for the provincial and federal elections. Moreover, for 18 of the 105 elected positions (17.1%), the number of invalid votes was equal to or higher than the victory margin of the winning candidate. This phenomenon is not unique to Montreal and can in fact be observed for many of the province’s big cities. Yet, it does lead us to question why the rate of invalid voting is higher at the municipal level, which is characterized by an apolitical context with limited electoral mobilization, than at the other levels of government. Studies on the model of second-order elections and the dynamics underlying invalid voting have shed new light on this topic. Rallings and Thrasher (2005), for example, emphasize that second- order elections are far from homogeneous, while Henderson and McEwen (2010) highlight the importance of context for understanding this type of election. Studies on invalid voting likewise underlined the importance of context, in particular of the social and political institutional context (Power & Garand, 2007). However, many studies on invalid voting focus specifically on 1 According to the last official census of 2011 realized by Statistics Canada, the city of Montreal had 1,649,519 inhabitants and the province of Quebec 8,054,800. 2 compulsory voting systems, which does not apply to North America. Thus, these studies are only of limited value for explaining why some people voluntarily take the time and make the effort to cast ballots that will then be invalidated. With this backdrop, the purpose of this article is to discuss invalid voting in the context of voluntary voter mobilization, limited turnout and apoliticism. First, we provide explanations for invalid voting, both as a general phenomenon and pertaining specifically to North American and Quebec municipal elections. Secondly, we test three hypotheses that may explain invalid voting in the 2009 Montreal municipal elections. In conclusion, in the presentation of results, we will describe certain specificities of municipal electoral behavior in more detail. 1. Invalid voting: a little-studied phenomenon A discussion on invalid voting gives rise to three observations. First, very few studies have addressed this issue. This is partly due to the difficulty of capturing invalid votes in their different forms. Essentially, they comprise various types of votes, including those in which the invalidation results from an error on the part of the voter rather than a deliberate action or omission. It is often difficult for researchers to distinguish the latter kind of ballots from those that were voluntarily invalidated. Moreover, reports on election results do not always make this distinction: “In the United States, for instance, invalid votes are not even reported in official statistics. Similarly, the European Social Survey does not include the alternative of the blank ballot when pondering respondents’ choices during the most recent elections in their countries” (Uggla, 2008). Further, because invalid votes often represent such an insignificant percentage of all ballots, researchers generally prefer to focus on valid votes or on abstentions. The lack of research attention given to this phenomenon may also be explained by the still relatively prevalent view that invalid voting is an expression of voter incompetence: “[Invalid ballots] may have something to do with an assumption that they belong to a residual category that indicates the incompetence of an art of the electorate and, hence, lacks interests from a political perspective” (Uggla, 2008). Another paradox is that the profile of the type of person who casts an invalid ballot is generally grouped into the same category with those who abstain from voting, yet that invalid ballots are nevertheless included in the voter turnout calculation. This alone is sufficient grounds for advocating a more in-depth study of the topic. The second observation is that studies on invalid voting seek to grasp the underlying rationale behind the phenomenon. Here, three main approaches stand out, being the institutional, socio- economic and dissenter approach. For some, the institutional context, in influencing the cost, in terms of effort, of voting for the voter, largely explains this type of voting behavior. This approach is based on the idea that voter turnout is highly correlated to the institutional context (Perez-Linian, 2001). For others, invalid voting is the result of a specific social structure (McAllister & Makkai, 1993), while still others see in it a sign of protest (Zulfikarpasic, 2001). More recent works also seek to interconnect all three of these distinct models within their studies. Power and Garand (2007), in their analysis of 18 Latin American countries between 1980 and 2000, state that: Socioeconomic variables: such as urbanization and income inequality are associated with levels of invalid voting, while institutional variables such as compulsory voting, electoral 3 disproportionality, and the combination of high district magnitude and a personalized voting system tend to increase blank and spoiled ballots. Moreover, regime-level factors such as political violence and the level and the direction of democratic change also shape the rates of invalid voting. This view is shared by Uggla (2008). Thirdly, of the few studies that have addressed this issue, most focus only on a context of compulsory voting, in which the invalid vote takes on a whole new meaning (Pion, 2010). In addition, most neglect the local level, despite a number of indicators that call for a more in-depth examination of the meaning behind invalid voting at this level of government. 2. The specificities of the municipal level in the United States and Canada In keeping with the overall lack of research on invalid voting, little research exists on the North American municipal level. This is due to neglect of this governmental level by political science and to the difficulty of obtaining usable data (Trounstine, 2009). Thus, research on North American municipal democracy, including on how the local political arena is structured, is lacking. Of the few studies on this topic, most focus on voter turnout and its specificities. There are three main elements to consider when looking at this level of government. One, voter turnout is often lower at the municipal level than at the other levels of government.
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