choicesVol. 9, no. 7 August 2003 ISSN 0711-0677 www.irpp.org

Strengthening Canadian DemocracyAn Account

and an Evaluation

Jerome H. Black

FromEnumerationto the NationalRegister ofElectors

F ounded in 1972, the Institute for Research onPublic Policy is an independent, national,nonprofit organization.

IRPP seeks to improve public policy in Canada bygenerating research, providing insight and sparkingdebate that will contribute to the public policydecision-making process and strengthen the quality ofthe public policy decisions made by Canadiangovernments, citizens, institutions and organizations.

IRPP's independence is assured by an endowmentfund, to which federal and provincial governmentsand the private sector have contributed.

F ondé en 1972, l’Institut de recherche enpolitiques publiques (IRPP) est un organismecanadien, indépendant et sans but lucratif.

L’IRPP cherche à améliorer les politiques publiquescanadiennes en encourageant la recherche, en mettantde l’avant de nouvelles perspectives et en suscitant desdébats qui contribueront au processus décisionnel enmatière de politiques publiques et qui rehausseront laqualité des décisions que prennent les gouvernements,les citoyens, les institutions et les organismescanadiens.

L’indépendance de l’IRPP est assurée par un fonds dedotation, auquel ont souscrit le gouvernement fédéral,les gouvernements provinciaux et le secteur privé.

Jerome H. Black teaches political science atMcGill University. Over the years, he haspublished in the areas of women and politics,the political participation and representationof ethnoracial minorities, Canadianimmigration and refugee policy, strategicvoting, and voter turnout.

This publication was produced under thedirection of André Blais, Professor, Universitéde Montréal; Paul Howe, Assistant Professor,Department of Political Science, University ofNew Brunswick; and Richard Johnston,Professor, Department of Political Science,University of British Columbia. Art directionwas by Schumacher Design, and printing wasby AGL Graphiques.

Copyright belongs to IRPP. To order or requestpermission to reprint, contact:

IRPP1470 Peel Street, suite 200Montreal, Quebec H3A 1T1Telephone: 514-985-2461Fax: 514-985-2559E-mail: irpp@irpp.org

All Choices and Policy Matters are available fordownload at www.irpp.org

The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of IRPP or its Board of Directors.

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Table of Contents2 Editors’ Note

3 Introduction

6 Part 1: Replacing Enumeration with a Permanent List

7 The Backdrop to Change: The White Paper, Two Reports, andthe Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and PartyFinancing

9 Putting Elections Canada into the Picture

13 The Politics of Change

15 Number of Options on the Table: One

16 Participation and Participation Inequality: Limited Attention

18 Part 2: The Impact on Participation

19 Official Turnout in 1984–2000

21 Coverage and Eligibility in 1984–2000

23 Turnout and Eligibility

23 The 2000 Election

29 The Impact on Participation

32 The Impact on Participation Inequality

33 Conclusion

37 Notes

Strengthening CanadianDemocracy / Renforcer ladémocratie canadienneResearch Directeur / Directrice de rechercheGeneviève Bouchard

S ince the 1960s, increased levels ofeducation and changing social valueshave prompted calls for increased

democratic participation, both in Canada andinternationally. Some modest reforms havebeen implemented in this country, but for themost part the avenues provided for publicparticipation lag behind the demand. TheStrengthening Canadian Democracy researchprogram explores some of the democraticlacunae in Canada's political system. In pro-posing reforms, the focus is on how the legit-imacy of our system of government can bestrengthened before disengagement from pol-itics and public alienation accelerate unduly.

D epuis les années 1960, le relèvementdu niveau d'éducation et l'évolutiondes valeurs sociales ont suscité au

Canada comme ailleurs des appels en faveurd'une participation démocratique élargie. Siquelques modestes réformes ont été mises enœuvre dans notre pays, les mesures envi-sagées pour étendre cette participation restentlargement insuffisantes au regard de lademande exprimée. Ce programme derecherche examine certaines des lacunesdémocratiques du système canadien et pro-pose des réformes qui amélioreraient la par-ticipation publique, s'intéressant par le faitmême aux moyens d'affermir la légitimité denotre système de gouvernement pour contrerle désengagement de plus en plus marqué dela population vis-à-vis de la politique.

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Again, this takes us back to the beginning of the SCDseries, Richard Johnston’s lead-off piece (“CanadianElections at the Millennium,” Choices, 6, no. 6,September 2000), which pointed to declining voterturnout over the past decade as an indicator that allis not well with Canadian politics at the millennium.But whereas Johnston’s analysis focused on theshortcomings of Canada’s party and electoral sys-tems, Black’s focuses on the significance of a newregistration system that places a greater burden onvoters to ensure that they are properly registered.

Black also enters another distinct area of investi-gation, inequalities in voter participation acrossdemographic groups, focusing in particular on ageand income differentials in turnout. Again, this is ter-rain explored in an earlier SCD piece, from a differentvantage point. Henry Milner (“Civic Literacy inComparative Context: Why Canadians Should BeConcerned,” Policy Matters, 2, no 2, July 2001) high-lighted the importance of inequalities in “civic litera-cy” to disparities in political participation. Black’sanalysis again draws our attention to administrativebarriers: certain groups, already disadvantaged in oneway or another, are less likely than others to findthemselves on the permanent voters list, and conse-quently face greater hurdles to voting in elections. Towhat extent does this exacerbate participationinequalities?

The answers Black provides to this and other ques-tions are persuasive and compelling. He draws on hisfindings to recommend a variety of measures, parallelwith the efforts that Elections Canada has been mak-ing to shore up the new system, to ensure that theNational Register of Electors functions effectively inthe future, particularly in facilitating robust andbroad-based voter participation, an important objec-tive for all who hope to see democracy rejuvenated inthis country.

André Blais, Université de MontréalPaul Howe, University of New Brunswick Richard Johnston, University of British Columbia

Editors’ Note

W hen the IRPP published the first paper inthe Strengthening Canadian Democracy(SCD) series in September 2000, our open-

ing observation was that Canada’s political institu-tions have stood largely unaltered since their creationand might benefit from some critical appraisal. Oneimportant exception to this institutional inertia is themethod used to register voters for elections. The tra-ditional approach in Canada was door-to-door enu-meration carried out just before an election. In 1997this approach was abandoned in favour of a perma-nent voters list, formally known as the NationalRegister of Electors. Regularly updated with informa-tion from a variety of government data sources, thepermanent list is now used to generate the prelimi-nary list of electors when an election is called, withfurther adjustments and updates undertaken through-out the campaign period.

If the new registration regime was put in placewithout much fanfare, it has since become the focusof considerable public attention. Concerns were raisedduring the 2000 federal election about flaws in thenew system that left would-be voters unregistered anduncertain about the necessary remedial measures.Similar concerns were voiced during the 1999 cam-paign in Ontario, which used the National Register togenerate the preliminary list of electors for its elec-tion. The province, along with others, now maintainsits own permanent list.

These concerns are based largely on anecdotal evi-dence. Jerome H. Black’s contribution in this issue ofChoices represents a systematic and rigorous investiga-tion, providing both an account and an evaluation ofthe switch from enumeration to a permanent voters list.

The account outlines the conditions that createdmomentum for change and the particular alignmentof forces that carried the day. In addition to sheddinglight on the motivations behind the change in regis-tration regimes, the analysis provides a frameworkfor examining the preconditions for other reforms toCanada’s political institutions, highlighting the sig-nificant hurdles that must be overcome in bringingabout institutional overhaul.

In his evaluation of the new approach to voterregistration, Black focuses on one fundamentaldimension — the impact on electoral participation.

Introduction

A s with most processes designed to regulateaspects of political life, the decision to estab-lish a particular voter registration regime

entails making significant choices. In one sense, thetask can be portrayed as a mechanical endeavour, theneed to select from among alternative methods, eachof which strikes a different balance between guaran-teeing that qualified citizens have unimpeded accessto the vote, on the one hand, and ensuring theintegrity of the voting process by guarding againstvoter fraud, on the other. Registration approaches alsodiffer in their degree of support for certain secondary,but nonetheless important, functions of the electoralsystem, such as allowing for the mobilization of vot-ers by providing parties with lists of electors.Registration systems also vary along other key dimen-sions, such as operational costs and the quality of theresulting lists. While such considerations are oftenregarded as establishing appropriate criteria for evalu-ating the performance of different registrationregimes, they can also be thought of as objectives thatthe process might be expected to meet. The selectionof a registration method, however, can also be under-stood within a more philosophical context where cen-tral principles and values establish a priority as to themost important purposes that the chosen approachshould serve. Characterizing the decision in this wayfollows from the recognition that in attaching agreater weight to particular objectives, different regis-tration regimes elevate some principles to a higherstatus than others.1

A key principle underlying Canada’s approach toregistration for federal (and most provincial) electionsfor much of the twentiety century, and around whichthere seems to have been a strong consensus, was thatthe state should assume the onus of ensuring that alleligible citizens were listed as electors.2 This belief was

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From Enumeration tothe National Register ofElectors: An Accountand an Evaluation

Jerome H. Black

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campaign (because of the time requirement of enu-meration), Boyer also states that the “most telling rec-ommendation for it is that approximately 98% of alleligible voters are registered.”7 He also cites, withapparent approval, Ward’s own positive verdict on theapproach, including how the Canadian experience has“furnished conclusive evidence that the making ofvoters’ lists is a proper state function.”8 For his part,Qualter also sees virtue in a system that generates anup-to-date and accurate list of electors, and does so,moreover, “at relatively low cost.”9 Courtney andSmith make the strongest and most carefully con-structed case for the traditional system, highlightingits advantages not only in absolute terms but also rel-ative to alternative approaches. They too emphasizethe ability of the enumeration method to reach out toall kinds of individuals:

Enumeration possesses the potential for incor-porating those with special needs into the eligi-ble electorate. These include electors in hospitalsand prisons, those with physical and mental dis-abilities, and the homeless, the poor and theilliterate. For such people, a system that dependsupon self-registration may well have a repres-sive effect on their willingness or capacity to beincluded on the list of electors. (p. 433)

They also believe that the personal contact inher-ent in enumeration can be beneficial in and of itself:

A system that places the onus for registration onthe state rather than on the citizen and that iscoupled with door-to-door enumeration serves asa personal reminder by the community of the pos-itive value that it places on electoral participationby its citizens. The approach of a pending electionis heralded through human contact. (p. 433)

While not all academics have embraced enumera-tion as the ideal model,10 the greater emphasis on itsmerits is certainly part of a broader consensus thathas existed about its value as a uniquely Canadianinstitution.

More to the point, enumeration had long stood thetest of official scrutiny and reflection, including eval-uation against other methods of registration. Asrecently as 1986, a White Paper on Election LawReform reaffirmed a preference for the traditionalsystem as opposed to either permanent-list forms ofregistration or annual enumerations.11 Though thewhite paper identifies some problems with enumera-tion, including the increasing difficulty some return-ing officers were having finding competentenumerators, these were spelled out in the context ofrecommendations designed to remedy these problem-atic aspects. Moreover, the report lists the main argu-ments typically offered on behalf of alternativeapproaches. The advantages of a permanent voters

manifested in the country’s postwrit or election-specific enumeration approach, through the practiceof carrying out a door-to-door canvass that usedenumerators who determined and recorded eligiblevoters. The resulting compilation, carried out oncethe writs had been issued and used solely for theelection at hand, became the preliminary list of elec-tors. Typically, there would be several visitations forthose initially missed or not at home, and while atsome point the onus shifted to the uncontacted (andthus unlisted) individual to take some minor steps tobecome registered, the dominant thrust of theapproach amounted to a reaching out on the part ofthe state — literally to the doorsteps of the citizenry.With the state assuming the initiative, the effortrequired or “costs” incurred by the individual werequite minimal.3 Moreover, in employing a virtualarmy of enumerators (e.g., about 110,000 enumeratorswere used for the 1988 election), the massive can-vassing effort was able to capture a very high propor-tion of the eligible population.4 It also served toenhance inclusion, particularly since it drew into thepolitical process the kinds of individuals, such as theyoung, the poor and those with little formal educa-tion, who otherwise would be less likely to take theinitiative to participate.5 This proactive approach,which was the essence of enumeration, worked toaugment voter turnout among all segments of societyand thus mitigated a natural tendency toward partici-pation inequality in electoral politics.

The fact that registration was undertaken justbefore an election also served to ensure that currencyand accuracy would characterize the registrationinformation compiled. Close sequencing resulted in areasonably up-to-date list of electors identified attheir current addresses and, consequently, preliminarylists that contained a minimum number of errors,either of exclusion (eligible voters not listed) or ofinclusion (ineligible voters listed). Thus, enumerationcaptured those who had changed residence, an impor-tant characteristic in a country with a high mobilityrate, as well as new citizens who were constantlyentering the electorate along with the newly age-eligible. The timely nature of postwrit enumerationalso meant that the false listing of those who hademigrated or passed away was kept to a minimum.

This model, with state initiative at its core, hadcome to define Canadian tradition, and moreover con-stituted, as Boyer notes, a practice that was unique inthe world.6 While he goes on to point out that a majorcriticism of the approach is its prolongation of the

provide ample opportunities for unlisted individuals toregister during an official revision period and on vot-ing day itself. These latter opportunities are vitalbecause no updating processes can sufficiently trackand record the enormous number of demographic andeligibility changes that constantly occur.

What happened? Why was enumeration, given itsstrong official endorsement as late as 1986, replaced bya permanent list? The question has even greater importconsidering that the changeover occurred fairly quick-ly, indeed within a remarkably short time frame, giventhat a major “representational building block,” to useCourtney’s words,18 was at stake. Moreover, the changewas part of a 1990s trend that witnessed five provincesadopt their own registers, joining British Columbia,which had (exceptionally) long relied on a permanentlist.19 Accounting for the switch in registration regimesat the national level is one of two principal and interre-lated tasks undertaken in this paper. The other is toevaluate the performance of the new system in facili-tating the electoral participation of Canadians.

In examining these two dimensions, this paper fol-lows up on an earlier project20 that provided some ini-tial exploration in both areas. That effort, in fact,identified most of the antecedent factors that appearedrelevant for a rudimentary understanding of thechangeover in registration regimes. The current contri-bution provides a more systematic account of whathappened, and in the process outlines the major devel-opments that unfolded over the period in question.Beyond this descriptive aspect, an emphasis is placedon the role played by Elections Canada and the chiefelectoral officer in implementing the new system. Thisportrayal consists mainly in considering what motivat-ed the agency to take the lead in pressing for changeand, as well, the kinds of arguments it advanced inorder to convince other major actors about both theneed for, and the benefits of, such a switch. Theseaspects are dealt with in Part 1. Part 2 similarly followsup on the earlier study, which had identified the mainissues and criteria that are relevant for comparativeassessments of the two methods of generating voterslists. In the current study, the emphasis is placed on theimplications for voter turnout in Canada, exploringthese in connection with participation levels amongboth the general population and the poorer and lessestablished segments of society (what is characterizedas equality of participation). The growing concern overdecline in voter turnout and nonvoting in Canada pro-vides an important justification for such a focus.Moreover, one of the key conclusions drawn in Part 1 is

list, for example, are cited as being a shortened cam-paign period and the elimination of both the “dupli-cation of effort at the three levels” of government(realizable through computerization) as well as theconfusion of voters caught up in overlapping regis-tration efforts. Overall, however, the recommendationto maintain enumeration was forceful and stronglyjustified. Compared to a permanent-list approach, itwas regarded as a less costly method. Moreover, itwas argued that a permanent list “would not neces-sarily be more accurate, more complete or more up-to-date than the present enumeration system unlessstrict controls or compulsory registration wereimposed,”12 and would be unacceptable to Canadiansconcerned about the threat to privacy entailed in themaintenance of permanent records. It seemed, then,that support for Canada’s traditional system of enu-meration was solid.

Ten years later, however, the postwrit enumerationsystem was abandoned. It was replaced by a perma-nent-list approach based on the compilation and main-tenance of a voters register. Bill C-63,13 which receivedRoyal Assent on December 18, 1996, mandated theimplementation of the new system for all electoralevents (elections, by-elections and referendums) at thefederal level. The National Register (formally, theNational Register of Electors) was subsequently estab-lished following a final door-to-door enumeration thatwas carried out in April 1997, which, in turn, gene-rated the preliminary lists for the ensuing June elec-tion.14 The legislation also reduced the minimum periodof an election campaign from 47 to 36 days.15

The National Register itself was established as an“automated database” containing the name, gender,date of birth and address of each Canadian citizeneligible to vote. Given that the standing expectationis for about 20 percent of the listed information toalter each year as a result of address changes (16 per-cent), new 18-year-olds (2 percent), new citizens (1percent) and deaths (1 percent),16 regular updating ofthe permanent list is regarded as being imperative.This is done by incorporating new information fromfederal departments, particularly the Canada Customsand Revenue Agency and Citizenship andImmigration Canada, as well as provincial motor reg-istration and vital statistics agencies. The system isalso designed to incorporate voting lists from otherjurisdictions. The commitment to maintain the regis-ter in as up-to-date a fashion as possible distinguish-es this approach as an “open” or “continuous”permanent-list form.17 So too does the commitment to

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and Chief Electoral Officer Jean-Pierre Kingsleywere characterized as being strongly supportive ofthe change.

Independently, Courtney has since provided his ownbrief account of the reasons for the advent of a perma-nent list, but he is more explicit in identifying thenear-perfect alignment of pressures and motivationsthat culminated in the change.24 He does so by drawingupon some fundamental aspects of organizational-innovation theory, particularly the propositions thatinnovation is most likely to occur when motivation isstrong, the obstacles to change are weak and resourcesare available to overcome any obstacle. Based oninformation gained from interviews, he writes:

There was at the time (1) strong support fromthe prime minister (Jean Chrétien) and a convic-tion on the part of important political handlersin the prime minister’s office (such as JerryYanover) that change was highly desirable; (2) anotable absence of political opposition to thechange in Parliament and indifference on thepart of the public and media to the issue; and(3) ample resources to overcome such obstaclesas there might have been. Those resourcesincluded Elections Canada’s identification of aset of problems with the existing system pack-aged together with a proposed solution to thoseproblems; the Lortie Commission’s qualifiedendorsement of a move away from door-to-doorenumeration; the high priority accorded the leg-islation’s speedy passage by the minister respon-sible for election administration [Herb Gray] andby the cabinet generally; and the attraction thatthe claims about the cost savings held for theparliamentarians.25

Courtney also points out, and rightly so, that theswitch was facilitated by a consensus surrounding asingle alternative. The fact that some provinces sup-ported and were interested in future co-operation alsoserved to expedite change.26

In short, both studies understand the alteration invoter registration regimes (and as well the relativequickness of the change) as resulting from a matrixof forces and events that pushed in the same direc-tion; moreover, these converging factors operatedwithout much in the way of counterveiling pressures.Cast at this level, the explanation for the changeoveris fairly straightforward and hardly a mysteriousaffair. Still, as both accounts are quite brief, there is aclear need for more extensive documentation. Achronological analysis helps to meet this need, whilealso affording an opportunity to specify the essentialdifferences between the two registration approachesand review the kinds of arguments and claims thatcan be made on behalf of each. A chronological anddescriptive narrative also meets the second objective

that relatively limited attention was given to the pos-sible consequences the changeover might have for theelectoral participation of Canadians. This sets up thecentral question explored in Part 2: whether the alter-ation in registration methods has resulted in reducedvoter turnout. The paper closes with a reiteration ofthe main conclusions, some reflections on their impli-cations and a discussion of issues and possibilities inthe development of the new regime.

Part 1: Replacing Enumerationwith a Permanent List

T he preliminary study, designed to frame rele-vant questions for this more extensive work,identified most of the factors that had a bear-

ing on the changeover in regimes and, as well, indi-cated that many of them operated in such a way asto reinforce each other’s influence.21 They includedincreasing concern over difficulties with the enu-meration system and a sense that a permanent listwould resolve these, while at the same time deliver-ing the additional advantage of cost savings and ashorter campaign period. Achieving economies wasan especially attractive prospect in a climate where-in neoliberal principles, centred on fiscal conser-vatism and a scaling back of government, continuedto gain ascendancy. This new environment was alsocharacterized by a concern to reduce duplication ofeffort and expenditures in the federation, so that theprospect of shared voters lists, and thus even moresavings, added to the appeal of a permanent list. Amore immediate factor was the close sequencing ofthe 1992 referendum on the Charlottetown Accordand the 1993 general election. This proximityallowed for the use of the 1992 lists, outside ofQuebec at least, in the 1993 election, establishing aprecedent for the “reuse” of lists22 and thereby help-ing to legitimize the argument for a permanent list.Also consequential was a 1992 recommendation bythe Royal Commission on Electoral Reform andParty Financing (RCERPF, or Lortie Commission) tomove toward a register, albeit a provincially basedone.233 The 1989 auditor general’s report was addi-tionally identified as having relevance insofar as itmotivated Elections Canada to integrate new com-puter technology into its operations, upon whichany successful and cost-effective permanent listwould ultimately depend. Finally, Elections Canada

benefits associated with a permanent list and indicatedthe changes that would be needed to make it a more fea-sible and acceptable alternative. As well, the white paperalluded to the chief difficulty with the enumeration sys-tem, one that had been slowly developing over the years— a shortage of qualified enumerators.27

The chief electoral officer’s 1989 statutory report28 canbe similarly identified as having reinforced the generalsense as to the need for reform without making anydirect contribution to the idea of substituting the enu-meration system. While it acknowledges the shortage ofqualified enumerators as a problem by listing the variousdiscretionary measures that returning officers had totake in the 1988 election, at no point does it call theenumeration approach itself into question, and it cer-tainly makes no mention of replacing it. The concernwith the need for reform in other areas is, however, verymuch in evidence. Chapter 2, “The Crisis in ElectionAdministration,” succinctly lists the various issues andpressures that were threatening to overwhelm the agency(pp. 9–12). One of these was the challenge of adoptingnew computer technology, a task made more difficult byunderstaffing and outdated legislative arrangements. Atthe same time, the report indicates that some steps hadbeen taken in the use of computers and office automa-tion, including during the 1988 election.

The auditor general’s report, also issued in 1989,acknowledged these developments but regarded them asinsufficient.29 It emphasized that far too much work wasstill being done manually, particularly with regard toenumeration and revision, and that even in those areaswhere computers were being employed disparate soft-ware programs were being used. The message, stronglyconveyed, was that Elections Canada needed to becomemore efficient and to seek economies through a greaterreliance on information technology and standardizedsoftware. The report pushed the case further by notingthat computerization could result in additional costreductions through the development of common proce-dures with other jurisdictions and the sharing of bothinformation and tasks. It also recognized ElectionsCanada’s difficulty in finding enumerators, though itprovided no further commentary in this regard. Still, inurging the agency to embrace fully technology andcomputerization and, as well, to engage in co-operativeendeavours with other jurisdictions, the auditor gener-al’s report may have contributed to the change thateventually occurred. After all, it was generally under-stood that the only way that a permanent-list approachcould be rendered sufficiently cost-effective, and thushave a chance of being considered seriously, was

of Part 1, namely to document the key role played byElections Canada, including the chief electoral officer,in engineering the changeover. To anticipate, it ismaintained that the agency and Chief ElectoralOfficer Kingsley were pivotal in two ways. First of all,they took advantage of opportunities within anevolving political context from the mid-1980s to theearly 1990s in which reform of the electoral processwas under serious and active consideration. While thedevelopments associated with this period can them-selves be seen as certainly having some relevance forthe eventual emergence of a permanent-list system,their impact is largely due to the mediating efforts ofElections Canada. As the agency committed itself tothe idea of a register, it gave expression and shape tothese background forces and made them more perti-nent and weighty. Elections Canada was also pivotalin a second sense, as they subsequently embarkedupon a strategy to demonstrate the technical andeconomic feasibility of a permanent list in order tosell the idea to elected officials. Moreover, they did soat an opportune time, when both government and themain opposition parties found the arguments forchange especially compelling and indeed self-serving.

The Backdrop to Change: The White Paper,Two Reports, and the Royal Commission onElectoral Reform and Party FinancingThe idea of a change in the registration regimegained momentum during a period of broad reflectionand debate on Canada’s electoral law. Prompted byconcerns about the inappropriate and outdated natureof current legislation and practice, especially in lightof new Charter-based realities and lags in the use ofnew technology, a consensus developed around theneed to countenance reform in many areas, thoughnot in the electoral system itself. The 1986 whitepaper and the RCERPF were both products of, and inturn contributed to, this context of questioning andthe contemplation of change. At the same time, theydiffered considerably in the conclusions they drewabout replacing the enumeration system. Two otherreports, discussed in a moment, also helped definethis period, and these too made reference to registra-tion matters.

The white paper’s impact on subsequent develop-ments is probably best understood as being an indirectone. While it did initiate debate on reform in many keyareas, in the particular case of voter registration itended up, as already noted, reaffirming a commitmentto enumeration. Still, it did list some of the potential

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edged that while these were not necessarily new con-cerns, they were nonetheless of increasing importanceand that “taken together, they make a census-typecount of voters more difficult than in the past” (p. 9).Similarly, problems accessing special-needs groupssuch as the hearing impaired, the illiterate, those whodo not speak English or French and immigrants “whomay be hesitant to respond to callers representing thestate given their experiences in their country of origin”were identified as having “increased substantially inboth absolute and relative numbers over the past twodecades” (p. 9).

The second difficulty — a more serious one thathad been the subject of increasing commentary overthe years — was the shortage of competent enumera-tors. Here, too, more women entering the labour forcewas a factor, since it meant that fewer individualswere available to take up enumeration duties.Personal safety concerns in urban centres “have alsotaken their toll” (p. 9). Moreover, candidates andpolitical parties, which have the right, in the firstinstance, to nominate enumerators, had becomeincreasingly unable or unwilling to do so. The supplyof enumerators was further constrained by statutoryrequirements limiting appointment to qualified votersresiding in the constituencies.

Importantly, chapter 1 also went on to make rec-ommendations for improving the quality of the enu-meration process by addressing these problems. Theseincluded the earlier appointment of enumerators, theappointment of “supervisory enumerators,” the selec-tion of enumerators from all registered constituencyassociations and from community associations, alowering of the minimum age to 16 and, in areaswhere safety was not a concern, the employment ofone enumerator instead of two. These measureswould no doubt have gone a long way toward resolv-ing the problems identified, and some were put inplace for the 1993 election (although enumerationwas not required outside of Quebec). Still, judgingfrom comments by the proponents of a register, itwas the problems of enumeration, not their recom-mended solutions, that stood out most in this part ofthe RCERPF’s report.

The chapter on register systems (chapter 4) waseven more influential, simply because it did indeed endup recommending that a permanent register be ad-opted for federal elections — although arguing that thiswould be affordable only if federal authorities were torely on provincially maintained lists. The particulars ofthe commission’s advocacy on behalf of a register can

through the use of automation to handle the necessarylarge-scale data collection and data managementtasks. As will be discussed below, the report appar-ently served as a catalyst in moving Elections Canadato embrace technological change.

The Royal Commission on Electoral Reform andParty Financing (RCERPF), without doubt, providedthe most extensive commentary and analysis on enu-meration and its possible replacement by a register.Its impact is evident in the way that it added to thegeneral climate for change and, more specifically,enhanced the legitimacy of a permanent-listapproach as a serious alternative to enumeration.Indeed, the RCERPF was, in fact, required as part ofits mandate to report on “the compiling of voters’lists, including the advisability of the establishmentof a permanent voters’ list.”30 In the end, it proposedmoving toward a register-based system. This addedconsiderable momentum to the notion that changewas desirable, and certainly the commission’s argu-ments and recommendations were often employed(though at times in a selective fashion) and becamefrequent points of departure and reference in the dis-course of those supporting a shift.

More particularly, the RCERPF’s main analysis andconclusions on voter registration are spelled out in twochapters of volume 2 of its final report, one dealingwith the enumeration system (chapter 1, “TheRegistration of Voters”), the other with the permanent-list approach (chapter 4, “A Register of Voters”). Thesignificance of the former is the concrete expression itgave to the scale of the decline in the quality of thecanvassing effort: “The critical issue that was raisedtime and again at our public hearings and that hasbeen acknowledged by election administrators, fede-rally and provincially, as an increasingly serious prob-lem over the past two decades, is the number of voterswho are missed by enumeration” (p. 7). The issue wasregarded as having two main components. One diffi-culty involved the predicament that enumerators facedaccessing voters at their residences. This was attributedto occupational and lifestyle changes, such as morewomen entering the labour force and jobs requiringmore travel, all of which meant that fewer individualswere at home when enumerators called. Also notedwere problems accessing multiple-unit buildings wherepolicies restrict door-to-door contact of residences.Furthermore, it was argued that in some urban areas“personal safety makes some voters, especially the eld-erly and those who live alone, unwilling to respond tounannounced callers” (p. 9). The Commission acknowl-

ed that the high quality of the stored registration infor-mation, another long-time concern with a permanent-list approach, could be ensured.

Yet another reservation about permanent lists centredon fears that citizens might have about state intrusionand the loss of privacy. In response, the commission sug-gested that a “high-quality voters register” could beestablished and maintained without the need to accessconfidential information in government databases (p.124), that registration could be kept voluntary, withoutvoters having to relinquish the right to list themselvesfor a particular election, and that the current legalrestrictions limiting the use of lists for electoral purposescould be extended, along with the implementation ofappropriate administrative and technical safeguards.

A final line of reasoning involved challenging theidea that what some regarded as distinctive benefits ofthe enumeration system would not necessarily be lost inthe move to a register. In response to the argument thatvoter interest could decline without personal contactwith enumerators as representatives of the state, thecommission suggested (but without any supporting evi-dence) that the extensive campaign activity would itselfproduce sufficient stimulation. In a somewhat similarvein, it asserted that “a shorter election period would notdiminish the time available to conduct a campaign at thelocal level” (p. 123) — candidates and parties would getthe preliminary lists of voters earlier since they would beautomatically produced from the register.32

Putting Elections Canada into the PictureWhile it is clear that the next focal point in the narra-tive is Elections Canada, there are several possible waysof inserting the agency into the analysis relative to thisbackground of significant discussion and the urging ofchange. One possible interpretation would be to take itssubsequent role and specific advocacy of a permanentlist as deriving from, and responding to, these develop-ments in the broader environment. Another vantagepoint, and the one adopted here, attributes more auton-omy and proactivity to the agency and, in fact, places itat the centre of an explanation of the changeover. Inessence, it appears that Elections Canada was alreadymotivated to give serious consideration to the idea of aregister and, in effect, capitalized on the greater recep-tivity to such a change that was being engendered. Thisincluded taking advantage of the contribution that wasmade by the RCERPF in enhancing the legitimacy of theidea of a new registration method.

Such a perspective finds substantiation, in part, bythe demonstration that the causal nexus between the

be thought of as involving multiple (and overlapping)types of argumentation and commitments. Onestressed how it would be possible to ensure that a reg-ister could be guided by some of the principles associ-ated favourably with enumeration. This essentiallyentailed a commitment to maintain the principle that“registration should primarily be a state responsibility”(p. 113), along with the long-standing orientation tofacilitate access to the voting process. Thus, the com-mission saw revision and election-day registration asbeing integral components of the overall process, ineffect establishing the approach as an open-list systemoffering multiple opportunities for voters to becomeregistered.31 In practical terms, of course, these provi-sions would be necessary to compensate for theexpected gaps in the register’s coverage and lack ofup-to-date listings of potential voters stemming fromeligibility and demographic changes.

Another line of argumentation underscored thedistinctive benefits of a permanent list. Principalamong these was the advantages of a shorter cam-paign — because canvassing would no longer be nec-essary. This segment of the argument built on a briefsection in another chapter (chapter 3, “Administeringthe Vote”) that began by noting that a shortenedcampaign was seen as a major advantage of a regis-ter, favoured as it was by most intervenors before thecommission (p. 77). Proponents of a shortened cam-paign typically claimed that “Canadians are over-exposed to politics and lose interest as a result” (p.79), that it would reduce administration costs andthat it would make it easier to recruit campaign help.Opposition came from those in large ridings and fromsmall parties with fewer campaign workers.

The case for change also involved the reiteration,often by implication, of the problems with enumera-tion. One point given particular emphasis was that ashared voters list would avoid the confusion of over-lapping enumeration by the different levels of gov-ernment. Maintaining that co-operation with otherjurisdictions would bring down the overall costs ofregistration exemplified another critical line of argu-mentation, namely, addressing the concerns that hadin the past surrounded the adoption of a permanent-list approach (such as its greater costs relative to enu-meration). The claim that provincially maintainedlists could be employed was regarded as being evenmore important for the idea that a register could beeconomically feasible. In this regard, the commissioncould point to its own research for backing (pp.125–132). Other research findings, it claimed, indicat-

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with the referendum vote on the CharlottetownAccord, in the 220 ridings outside of the province ofQuebec (which had opted to supervise the referendumunder its own rules). Even if the computerized listswere drawn up in conjunction with an enumeration,this large-scale use of automation was a significantstep on the road to a permanent list. More to thepoint, it was what Elections Canada not only believedbut, as well, what it planned for. The goal was to havethe finalized 1992 voters list serve as the basis for thepreliminary list for the next general election, expectedin 1993, thus eliminating the need for another enu-meration. This would allow the agency to claim a rel-evant precedent in moving toward a register, since listreuse is the core principle of such a system. In practi-cal terms, it would allow Elections Canada to point tothe acquisition of necessary experience and makemore concrete the ways in which the foregoing of adoor-to-door canvass would save money.

The forward thinking of the organization in thisregard is quite apparent. A specific provision in the1992 Referendum Act allowed for reuse of the voterslist for up to one year following the nationwide con-sultation on the Charlottetown Accord. Moreover, thisintent was certainly not disguised by ElectionsCanada. In his report on the referendum, the chiefelectoral officer made it quite clear what he had inmind for the future and the importance of computerautomation in achieving that objective.

Implementation of the ECAPLE system for thereferendum was an investment in the future. Thesystem played a key role in making possible there-use of the official lists of the referendum aspreliminary lists for the 35th general election, aswas foreseen in the Referendum Act, and itscontinued use offers potential for savings infuture electoral events at the federal, provincialand municipal levels.35

Kingsley’s report on the 1993 election is evenmore forthcoming and elaborative of what the largerobjective was, and indeed includes a chapter appro-priately titled “Preparing for a Continuous Register ofElectors.”36 The preface to this chapter is interestingnot only for its summary statement about the com-mitment to a register, but also for the way in which itjustifies that commitment, illustrating several of theinterpretations discussed above:

In its report of February 1992, the RoyalCommission on Electoral Reform and PartyFinancing recommended that Elections Canadainvestigate ways of reducing duplicated effortsamong election administrators at the federal,provincial/territorial, and municipal levels, espe-cially in the compilation of the voters list. Fromthe number of submissions to the Royal

RCERPF’s advocacy of a register and subsequentdevelopments is weaker and much less direct thanmight be expected. Key to this characterization is thecommission’s recommendation of provincially main-tained lists. This was simply a nonstarter for ElectionsCanada, and, indeed, it is difficult to imagine that theagency would ever take such a suggestion seriously,given that provincial processes and eligibilityrequirements differ too widely to allow it to meet itsobligation for standardization and a national outlook.There is also, of course, the play of ordinary bureau-cratic politics and federal-provincial considerationsthat suggest that the agency would have been reluc-tant to cede direction of the registration process. Co-operating with the provinces was one thing, yieldingcontrol was quite another. A key discussion documentthat would later emerge from Elections Canada makesthis point in plain language:

Elections Canada has a pan-Canadian need forcomplete, accurate and current electors lists.Federal electoral eligibility requirements providea common denominator amongst federal,provincial and territorial jurisdictions. ElectionsCanada is, therefore, well positioned to assumethe role of leadership.33

Still, this did not stop the agency from repeatedlydwelling on the commission’s sanctioning of apermanent-list approach as a critical source justifyinga switch in registration regimes.

The initiatives that Elections Canada undertookwell before the RCERPF tabled its final report (inFebruary 1992) constitute even more persuasive evi-dence that the changeover was only diffusely andtenuously the result of the commission’s work; moreto the point, they indicate the agency’s predispositiontoward the adoption of a permanent-list approach. Inpart, these steps suggest a determined response to thegrowing recognition that Elections Canada needed toexploit new technology, especially computer-basedtechnology. Still, the tight sequencing of these initia-tives and corresponding developments strongly indi-cates that these measures were put into place with thelarger goal of developing a list well in mind.

Specifically, by-elections as early as 1990 providedthe agency with an opportunity to, in its own words,“test customized software for the computerization ofthe lists of electors.”34 That experience provided thebasis for a March 1991 commitment to use proceduresthat had already been developed (known as ElectionsCanada Automated Production of Lists of Electors, orECAPLE) to produce voters lists on a broader scale.The first opportunity to do so came in October 1992

In the interview with the author, Kingsley corro-borated the evidence on his central role, and he alsohelped to shed light on some important details that, inturn, reinforce the perspective that privileges the impactof the agency in the overall scheme of things. Clearly, hehad thought about the possibility of a register early on.When he first arrived at Elections Canada, the LortieCommission was in full swing, but by his own admissionKingsley initially concentrated on the problems assoc-iated with the lack of automation and standardization indrawing up voters lists for the 1988 election. Even beforethe RCERPF released its report, he had laid the ground-work for the development of ECAPLE for use in the 1992referendum. At one point in the interview, he allowedthat the notion to push for a register had come to himearly on but that his staff warned him that “you can’t gotoo far too fast.” At other times, he talked about how,while he gave particular direction to the development ofthe register, it was an idea that had been “percolating” fora while in Elections Canada: “A damned good idea whosetime had come,” was how he described it. That it was hisinitiative to reuse the 1992 list is another importantmarker of Kingsley’s early conviction; indeed, he indi-cated that he would have preferred to see amendments tothe Referendum Act permitting the re-employment withintwo years, not one, presumably to enlarge the window ofopportunity for establishing the reuse precedent. Cert-ainly, he was unambiguous in communicating the impor-tance of a consecutive application of the list and of itsforming the basis for testing a permanent-list system.

Kingsley’s claims about the primary reasons thatdrew him early on to the notion of a register are alsoconsistent with other available information about howthe process unfolded. He spoke of being motivated bythe growing problems with enumeration and, as well,the need, as a general matter, to develop automatedand standardized procedures; these were, of course,the kinds of arguments that were being widely madeto justify a change in registration approaches. He alsoidentified possible future benefits in areas such ascartography. Interestingly, he did not spontaneouslymention cost considerations, which, as will been seen,came to figure prominently in arguments that werebeing marshalled on behalf of a register. Only whendirectly asked about their role did he give them somerelevance, indicating that as a career civil servant hewas always interested in saving money. Still, he didmaintain that “Cost is a factor; it is not a driving fac-tor.” He also said he “might have had secondthoughts” had the research demonstrated that the newsystem would cost more.

Commission and the number of letters toElections Canada, it is clear that methods betterthan door-to-door enumeration must be foundto prepare the voters lists. Some form of a con-tinuous register, that is, a voters list that ismaintained and updated on a regular basis,seems to be the obvious solution. (p. 130)

As will be seen, Kingsley, in an interview with theauthor, confirmed an even earlier commitment to apermanent-list approach on the part of Elections Canada.

By itself, the fact that the chief electoral officerwas personally strongly in favour of a change in reg-istration methods is no minor detail. Indeed, itappears that if Elections Canada was at the centre ofthe process of bringing about a switch, Kingsley wasits epicentre. His public reports and pronouncements,as well as his comments during the interview,37 pro-vide plenty of evidence of the leading role that heplayed. This is not to suggest that the idea originatedwith Kingsley. By his own admission, it was one thathad been bandied about within Elections Canadabefore he took over, and certainly it is fathomablethat over the years there would have been much“institutional reflection” on registration matters,increasing as enumeration came under intensifyingscrutiny. Rather, what is a simple but neverthelessvital point to understand about Kingsley is that, asthe top official, he came to hold a sturdy personalcommitment to a permanent list not long afterassuming the post in February 1990, and he clearlypushed for its implementation as soon as circum-stances permitted. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine theregister coming into force as quickly as it did withouthis enthusiastic commitment to a new approach andwithout his guidance in focusing the agency’s effortsin that direction.

The formal record, including Kingsley’s statutoryreports on the 1992 referendum and the 1993 election(both issued in January 1994), is replete with sub-stantiating evidence and cannot possibly be readwithout immediately grasping the strength of thecommitment to a register-based approach. A fewyears later, in April 1996, Kingsley would appearbefore the Standing Committee on Procedure andHouse Affairs, welcomed by the chair to discuss “hisfavourite project, the registry of elections.”38 InOctober, Herb Gray stood in the House to move thatBill C-63 be referred to that same committee, com-menting that “This bill stems from the report of theRoyal Commission on Electoral Reform and PartyFinancing, the Lortie Commission, and from the rec-ommendations made by the Chief Electoral Officer.”39

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the past and with an orientation that had been criti-cized in the auditor general’s report; by adopting thevery latest in automation and other technology, theagency would be heeding the imperative to “modern-ize,” a word that Kingsley repeatedly used as heendeavoured to promote the switchover.41

Beyond establishing ECAPLE, Kingsley and theagency took other concrete steps that reveal aneagerness to move expeditiously toward instituting aregister. A steering committee was struck on October20, 1993, with a mandate to “act as a coordinatingbody, within Elections Canada, with respect to com-municating and encouraging the development of AContinuous Register of Electors.”42 By the spring of1994, the in-house “Discussion Paper on aContinuous Register of Electors” was produced,intended to provide a “high level overview of the con-cept of the Register.”43 The document provides back-ground commentary about registers, including theexperiences of other countries, but the bulk of thetreatment and its overall tone make it quite clear thatwhat was at issue was not whether a register wouldbe established but rather the timing and the modali-ties of how it might be brought to fruition.44 No con-sideration whatsoever was given to the possibility ofretaining enumeration and handling its shortcomingsthrough remedial measures; instead, the emphasiswas squarely on the need for change. To this end,there was the by now familiar litany of complaintssurrounding enumeration and the advantages andopportunities that a register could confer.

Other important themes further reveal the goal-oriented nature of the document. One chapter, forinstance, dealt with design considerations and someadministrative and technical matters that would needto be taken into account in establishing a register(e.g., how the register might be structured, data qua-lity considerations and the like). Perhaps most impor-tant of all was the chapter “Strategic Avenues,”which dealt with the issues and obstacles, includingpolitical ones, that needed to be addressed. One sec-tion, headed “Political Will,” pointed out that “politi-cians need to be educated about the current problemsand potential solutions in a cross-jurisdictional per-spective” (p. 28). The document concluded, confi-dently, that “key arguments support the initiation of aprocess that will lead to the creation of a sharedRegister of Electors” (p. 33).

The next step involved the steering committee set-ting up a special project team, in late 1994 or early1995,45 charged with examining “the costs and bene-

Two other factors, the idea of sharing data withthe provinces and the “benefit” of having a shortenedcampaign period, were also not offered upfront ashaving primary relevance. Again, only when specifi-cally probed about each did he indicate that theywere “important secondary” considerations. Sharingdoes save the taxpayer money, he readily acknowl-edged, but it was up to the provinces to use the data.His only elaboration with regard to campaign lengthwas to suggest, interestingly enough, that the LortieCommission was mistaken in concluding that a 40-day campaign is possible even with enumeration;only a register, Kingsley maintained, can reduce theperiod to under 47 days.

His broader comments on the RCERPF reinforce theargument made above about its lesser or its more indi-rect impact on the emergence of the register. Kingsleyeven went so far as to assert, in rather blunt language,that the RCERPF’s support for a provincially basedapproach had a negative impact on the movementtoward a register: “It hindered the work of ElectionsCanada because it created for some provincial electoralbodies a form of tacit recognition of their centrality;some saw it as being in their hands.” In fact, if theinterview provided a sense that any report deserves tobe singled out for having influenced his thinking anddevelopments within Elections Canada, it was theauditor general’s report, which had sharply criticizedthe agency’s sluggishness in embracing new techno-logy. This jolt to the agency appears to have engen-dered a commitment to catch up technologically andindeed, judging from Kingsley’s demeanour andactions, to go much further than that.

This point merits emphasis and helps make a largerargument that the eagerness for the project was part ofa broader vision, no doubt shared by Kingsley andothers in Elections Canada, that the agency needed toembrace technological change and innovation unre-servedly. The development of a computerized list wasonly one way that Elections Canada could positionitself in the forefront with regard to the use of themost sophisticated technology available; other areasincluded digital mapping, voting by telephone, elec-tronic voting (or “smart cards”) and voting machines(including touch-screen equipment) in ballot booths.40

A computerized voters list would fit well with andindeed facilitate these innovations. In short, it is prob-ably fair to say that a “culture of technology” grippedElections Canada and that the exploitation of informa-tion technology became an operating and self-evidentnorm. This outlook represented a conscious break with

time and not in the tight time frames currently requiredduring an electoral event” (p. 17).

The report also addressed the long-standing concernover invasion of privacy and confidentiality of theinformation that electors provided, and in several ways.First of all, it proclaimed privacy and confidentiality ascore standards that had helped guide the research; thiswas part of the commitment to ensure that the registerwould preserve “certain principles and characteristics ofthe Canadian electoral system.” There were also indica-tions that the project team had reviewed the treatmentof privacy concerns in other jurisdictions, and therewere references to how there had been continuous con-sultations with the federal Privacy Commissioner’sOffice (p. 21); indeed, there was an acknowledgementthat a “privacy advisor” from the office had participat-ed in many of the workshops (p. 7).

The Politics of Change48

However one might characterize Elections Canada’spackaging of arguments and background research tomake a case for a register, it is abundantly clear thatthe government bought the package. Its support of analtered registration process and abbreviated campaignperiod is indicated most obviously by the legislativepriority it attached to the changeover. On October 21,1996, a little over half a year after the release of TheRegister of Electors Project, Bill C-63 was given firstreading. The legislation moved fairly quickly throughthe House, receiving a third reading on November 26.The government’s firm support of the initiative is fur-ther evident in the selection of Herb Gray, who wasHouse leader and solicitor general, to shepherd the billthrough the chamber. Courtney similarly notes (in pass-ing) this turn of events as being reflective of the gov-ernment’s determined backing and, importantly, addsthat his interviews suggested firm specific support fromJean Chrétien and the Prime Minister’s Office. Politicalsupport was apparent not only from within the execu-tive, however. It was also forthcoming from legislatorsas a whole. Indeed, the Standing Committee onProcedure and House Affairs had signalled its approvaleven before the formal release of the The Register ofElectors Project report, when members were briefed byKingsley in December 1995. While that session, it willbe recalled, was held behind closed doors, the minutesof subsequent meetings dealing with the draft legisla-tion make it clear that there had been widespreadendorsement for the register at that earlier gathering.Moreover, in the report itself the committee was char-acterized as having “concurred in the value of moving

fits of a register, extensive work on new processes andprocedures, evaluation of sources for updating data,consultation with potential partners, and feasibilityassessment.”46 One year later, in December 1995, suffi-cient work had been done to allow the chief electoralofficer to present the team’s main findings to theHouse of Commons Standing Committee on Procedureand House Affairs at an in camera meeting.

The project team’s report, The Register of ElectorsProject: A Report on Research and Feasibility, begancirculating in the spring of 1996. It declared unequiv-ocally that study and analysis had shown that anational register was “both feasible and cost effective”(p. 5). Other assertions were set forth as additional“main conclusions.” A few of these reiterated familiarthemes such as how the register would allow a reduc-tion in the election period from 47 to 36 days.Another identified the most appropriate existingsources for keeping the register up-to-date and arguedthat a “targeted reliability level of 80%” for the regis-ter could be maintained, meaning that the derivedpreliminary list would have the correct addresses foran estimated 80 percent of eligible voters. This figurewas judged as “the level necessary to conduct an elec-toral event” (p. 5). The report also confirmed currentsupport and future interest by other electoral agenciesfor a shared national register and as well dealt withthe kinds of legislative changes that would be requiredfor its creation. Finally, a key conclusion highlightedfiscal savings. While the implementation of a registerat the next election would cost about the same as car-rying out an election under enumeration (in largemeasure because a final enumeration would be neces-sary), each subsequent contest would allow for sav-ings (a “cost avoidance”) of $40 million, and evenmore as other jurisdictions joined in (p. 6).47

Beyond these specifics, the report’s general tonereflected what had by then developed into the setstrategy for selling the register, and one rooted in thelogic employed by the Lortie Commission, namely,taking the problems and limitations of the enumera-tion approach as a point of departure, demonstratinghow a permanent-list system would both amelioratethose difficulties and provide further benefits, andfinally, pointing out how traditional concerns atten-dant with a permanent-list method could be sur-mounted. The latter included the argument that thevoters list could indeed be effectively maintained andkept up-to-date. It was even pointed out that “elec-toral information would be of higher quality, becausepreliminary lists of electors would be produced over

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The appeal of a reduced campaign period musthave also been politically attractive to key politiciansand their advisers. While most proponents of ashorter campaign touted its virtues by making thespecific argument that administrative costs would becurbed or by offering the more diffuse notion thatCanadians would be spared the tedium of an overlylong contest, behind the scenes it may well have beenunderstood that a condensed campaign would servethe re-election interests of an incumbent government— especially one that commanded a substantial leadin public opinion polls and that faced a sharplydivided opposition. Even in the absence of hard evi-dence for a direct link between campaign length andincumbency success,53 the government likely realizedthat any lead it held would be harder to overcome ina compressed campaign period.54

The main opposition parties were no doubt alsoaware of this Liberal advantage, though they merelyalluded to it in the House.55 With the Liberals stillleading in the polls and an election imminent, theworry was that hasty implementation would indeedgive the governing party an advantage.56 This is thechief reason why the opposition parties ultimatelyvoted against the legislation. Indeed, the governmentused time allocation to end debate and expedite pas-sage, ignoring opposition protests that there had beeninsufficient consultation and that there was no “realreason” to rush the process. There were also theobligatory and predictable add-on complaints, suchas that the bill did not go far enough in the contextof what were regarded as other areas in need of con-sideration. The Reform Party wanted additional delib-eration on the subject of having fixed elections andthe establishment of recall procedures, and also urgeddebate on removing the subsidies and tax conces-sions to political parties.57

From the other direction, the Bloc Québécoispushed for a stricter election finance regime, specifi-cally one that mimicked Quebec’s more regulatedapproach. That said, the opposition protest wasdriven mostly by the timing of the process and itshurried implementation of the new registrationapproach. As has already been pointed out, theStanding Committee on Procedure and House Affairsas a whole had been supportive of the idea of changefrom the very outset, and throughout the legislativeproceedings the two main opposition parties contin-ued to signal their fundamental agreement with theprinciples of establishing a permanent list and ashorter campaign.58 Reform MPs on the committee

to a register system, enthusiastically supported theapproach proposed for its implementation, andagreed that Elections Canada should immediately pre-pare a report in the form of draft legislation to beginto develop the administrative mechanisms and sys-tems needed to use a register in the fall of 1997.”49

What is the basis of this political support? Whywas the changeover given such an easy political ride?Courtney does not elaborate on what, specifically,may have motivated Chrétien, his ministers and hispolitical advisers to embrace the change, but presum-ably they accepted the long-standing argument that apermanent list would resolve old problems and bringnew benefits — among which the prospect of curbingexpenditures would have had special appeal. Whilethe costs associated with running the registration sys-tem had always been one of the criteria for evaluat-ing the relative merits of different approaches,registration economics came to play an even largerrole as neoliberal principles became more widespreadand entrenched during this period and as the Chrétiengovernment became convinced of the need to reducethe state’s financial burden. In short, as the costs ofthe registration system came to be evaluated within aclimate of economic restraint, the notion that a per-manent voters list could save governments and tax-payers money would have generated a positiveresponse in many quarters.

Federal-provincial politics were no doubt also aconsideration. At one level, the fact that someprovinces had signalled their interest in co-operatingwith Ottawa enhanced the prospect of the federalgovernment using provincial sources to update theregister and cut overall costs through shared voterslists. Another amenable development, alluded to ear-lier, was the adoption at that time of permanent listsby a growing number of provinces. On a more politi-cal level, however, Ottawa’s ability to point toprovincial interest and possible involvement, in anera when cross-jurisdictional conflict was more com-mon than not, provided it with a focal point forfederal-provincial co-operation and success. It alsoserved to illustrate that concrete steps were beingtaken to end overlap and duplication of effort on thepart of the different governments,50 a fixation thathad been intensifying as part of a general process of“rethinking government” designed to render its oper-ations more efficient and cost-effective.51 Thusfederal-provincial co-operation meshed with savingsas significant explanatory factors driving support forthe register.52

which set out campaign pledges in numerous areas.59

Another timing-sensitive point is apparent when onerecalls that the agency established its all-importantsteering committee with the mandate, again, “to act asa coordinating body, within Elections Canada, withrespect to communicating and encouraging the devel-opment of A Continuous Register of Electors” onOctober 20, 1993, that is, even before the 1993 electioncampaign had drawn to a close.

In sum, the argument here is that both governmentand opposition responded positively to ElectionsCanada’s initiative because the change was politicallyand economically favourable and because it was in theinterests, both partisan and otherwise, of the main par-ties to go along. No doubt, much of what was pitchedto the elected officials and their advisers by ElectionsCanada reflected its appreciation of which arguments,explicitly made or perhaps merely implied, would bemost effective. In this sense, the organization not onlycapitalized on amenable circumstances as it took up thecause of a register, but actively championed it as well.

Number of Options on the Table: OneJohn Courtney makes the simple, though important,point that the process of change became easier in theabsence of debate on what might replace enumeration.Consensus among those seeking change that the onlyacceptable alternative was some form of “open” perma-nent list no doubt helped concentrate opposition toenumeration in favour of a register. A broader take onCourtney’s observation might be that this consensuseffectively ended up precluding the option of reformingenumeration. As it was, the reflection and discussionthat surrounded registration reform tended to be nar-rowly focused. A more encompassing considerationmight have done more to stress the relative strengths ofenumeration and to include an analysis of the possibil-ity of reforming the canvassing-based process to meetwhat were regarded as its limitations. Such a stancewould not have been completely at odds with the con-clusions of the Lortie Commission, which did, ofcourse, offer important recommendations for improvingthe enumeration system, even as it favoured the moveto a (provincially based) register.

However, the weight of the recommendations wasundermined not only by the RCERPF’s advocacy of apermanent list, but also by the limited analysis that ithad conducted as it drew critical conclusions about thefunctioning of the enumeration method. This is thecase that Courtney and Smith make in their RCERPF-sponsored background publication.60 While admitting

and in the House were openly enthusiastic about thepossible cost reductions that would be realized fromthe changeover (and, to a lesser extent, content that asource of minor patronage would be removed for thedominant Liberals), while, for its part, the Bloc con-tinued to take its lead from developments in Quebec,where the provincial government was in the processof establishing its own voters register. Mention mightbe made as well that opposition members, as incum-bent politicians contemplating their own personal re-election campaigns, likely also regarded a shortercampaign as an attractive feature.

In short, the fact that Reform and the Bloc ulti-mately voted against Bill C-63 does not contradict theessential portrayal that the major political forces werelined up on the same side. Moreover, in retrospect,given their political outlooks, it is not at all surprisingthat there was support for the permanent list on thebenches opposite the government. This is, of course,one of the implications of what was the most promi-nent feature of the political era, the collapse of the tra-ditional party system, characterized by devastatinglosses by the New Democratic Party and, especially, theProgressive Conservative Party, and their replacementby Reform and the Bloc. The two older parties werevirtually invisible in the debate, as they were inParliament generally, and, of course, lacking status as“recognized parties,” had no representation on theStanding Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

The executive, the Liberal Party and the two mainopposition parties were clearly neither invisible norirrelevant as part of the defining political environ-ment that ultimately produced the National Register.Obviously, their support, and particularly the backingby the government, were essential ingredients, and itis significant that these forces were all arrayed on thesame side as the process unfolded. However, theirimpact, even if convergent in nature, was subsequentto the initiative demonstrated by Elections Canadaand the engineering efforts that agency made todevelop and sell the case for change. The early stepsthat Elections Canada took, already documented, areespecially relevant for appreciating its prior impactwith reference to these political forces. Reinforcingthis interpretation of causal sequencing is the virtualabsence of any evidence suggesting that these politi-cal actors, all of whom fared well in the 1993 elec-tion, had signalled any pre-existing preferences for achange in the registration system. Especially impor-tant in this regard is the lack of any mention of reg-istration reform in the Liberals’ famous “Red Book,”

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process is even more indicative of a very early prefer-ence for a complete overhaul. Note as well thatElections Canada’s general strategy of selling the ideaof a register served the same purpose — to keep allother options off the table.

Participation and Participation Inequality:Limited AttentionElections Canada’s research agenda was, unfortunately,also circumscribed in another important way: relative-ly little concrete consideration was given to the impactof a permanent-list approach on electoral participa-tion, including equality of participation. To be sure,there was a formal commitment to the idea that anynew system would need to work to facilitate the vote.Indeed, appearing before the Senate as it consideredBill C-63, Kingsley articulated six principles that hadguided thinking about the development and mainte-nance of the register, pointing out that the RCERPF’sown deliberations had been framed in these same prin-ciples. The first three centred on the need to ensurethat the state would continue to assume primaryresponsibility for registration, that potential voterswould be given postwrit opportunities to register andthat the new system would function as effectively asthe enumeration system — meaning that levels of cov-erage and accuracy would be equivalent to thoseachieved through enumeration. The remaining guide-lines centred on concerns about privacy, confidentiali-ty and the right not to participate in the process.61

These principles are comparable, though not iden-tical, to the orienting standards that were spelled outin The Register of Electors Project.62 The first three ofthese similarly identified state initiative and voteraccess as guiding principles. The fourth pledged torespect electors’ privacy and the confidentiality oftheir personal information. A fifth posited the need tolocate reliable data sources, in order both to minimizethe costs of developing and maintaining the registerand to avoid “any further imposition on Canadians ingathering personal information.” Finally, there was acommitment to investigate the matter of sharing theregister’s data with other jurisdictions.

The main point is that nowhere in that key reportwas there any note of concern about the possible neg-ative effects on voter participation that might ensuefrom the implementation of a permanent list. Short ofa population register that would serve as the basis fora voters register or a system of mandatory registration,neither of which was seriously considered (and under-standably so), the permanent-list method as envisaged

that the shortage of qualified enumerators had been aproblem, they state that it was not a particularly newdifficulty, that there was no hard evidence that it hadincreased in magnitude and that it was in any event acircumscribed matter involving some, but hardly all,urban polls. Courtney and Smith also wonder if enu-meration problems, especially overlooked voters,could indeed all be linked to the failure to find suffi-ciently qualified enumerators. Importantly, they pointout that 85 percent of the returning officers were newin 1988 and that their inexperience could easily haveresulted in the inadequate training of enumerators. Inaddition, they observe that the pressure to begin thecampaign quickly was “another practical constrainton efficiency that is quite separate from the qualityof personnel” (p. 363). They also list other factors,such as inadequate pay, as explanations for the short-fall in qualified enumerators.

Courtney and Smith also raise questions about theevidence justifying a move toward a shorter cam-paign. While the commission was no doubt impressedby the large number of interveners who identified ashorter campaign as one advantage of a permanentlist, it is unclear whether this sentiment spread muchbeyond the context of its proceedings. The twoauthors admit that although there had been someconcern about campaign length in the recent past(and that presumably this is what led to the reductionfrom 60 to 50 days), their sense of the matter is thatit continued to be a fairly minor preoccupation. Afterreviewing statutory reports, newspaper commentariesand Elections Canada’s publication Contact, they con-clude: “In a list of problems and shortcomings ofCanada’s voter registration system, the length of thecampaign to which enumeration contributes, must beranked low” (p. 371).

It would appear, then, that the RCERPF’s limitedresearch into the problems of enumeration is one ofthe specific ways in which the commission con-tributed to the ascendancy of the permanent-list idea,which Elections Canada benefited from as it began tosponsor a federally controlled permanent list. Theabsence of a comprehensive assessment, one thatincluded research-based solutions to the problems ofenumeration, made it easier for the agency to takethose difficulties (and the supposed benefits of ashorter campaign) as its launching point. It then hadonly to demonstrate that the substitution of a perma-nent list would resolve those problems. Of course, thefact that the agency’s research agenda did not itselfinclude any analysis of a revamped enumeration

respond to criticism that participation was not a pri-ority? One obvious problem with such a rebuttal is thata larger array of revision opportunities is just that —opportunities — and individuals would still need to takeadvantage of them. In other words, it is precisely therebalancing of the registration exercise toward a heav-ier emphasis on revision that is at the heart of the newsystem. Therefore, to demonstrate that compensatingopportunities could be put in place, without, at thesame time, an analysis of how easy or difficult it wouldbe for citizens, particularly specific categories of them,to avail themselves of the opportunities constitutes avery incomplete form of analysis.

The notion that the research into data quality mightbe taken as evidence of a concern about participation isalso weakened by the low threshold that ElectionsCanada set for itself as it defined what the agency need-ed to achieve in order to meet the pledge of matchingenumeration’s coverage and accuracy. This point meritssome unpacking. The Register of Electors Project claimsthat the research showed that “a register could be main-tained between electoral events at a targeted reliabilitylevel of 80%, the level necessary to begin conducting anelectoral event, by importing electronic data from exist-ing sources” (p. 5). This percentage represents all eligiblevoters expected to be listed at their correct address as theregister generates the preliminary lists. Importantly, it is“based on the 1993 experience of successfully conduct-ing an election using an unmaintained one-year-old listthat had declined to an average of 80% level of reliabili-ty” (pp. 25–26). This benchmark, then, has its origins inthe reuse of the 1992 list one year later, without modifi-cation — that is, without additions or purgings — and inthe knowledge that 20 percent of the electorate is affect-ed by demographic changes over the course of a givenyear (16 percent address changes, 2 percent new 18-year-olds, 1 percent new citizens, and 1 percent deaths).The intent, of course, was to have revision and electionday registration provide the opportunities for the neededcorrections and additions.

There are two points to make regarding the 80-per-cent reliability figure. First, it was perhaps given morecredence than might be warranted simply because the1993 election with which it was associated was deemedby Elections Canada to have been “successfully cond-ucted.” Without challenging that summary characteriza-tion — establishing the overall success of an election,from an administrative perspective, is surely a complexundertaking — the attribution still required detailed sub-stantiation. It would be insufficient to merely state thatan unprecedented number of people registered during

could never match the effectiveness of the state-initiated enumeration approach in facilitating registis-tration. It is true, of course, that once they areinscribed in the National Register, voting would be arelatively easy matter for the overwhelming majorityof Canadians who do not move between electoralevents. Nevertheless, for the many who do changeaddresses, particularly if they move out of their origi-nal constituency (see below), some action would berequired to correct their registration information. Thenewly eligible, especially those turning 18, would needto do even more to register in the first instance.Without denying that with the new regime in placeElections Canada has made it as easy as possible forindividuals to become properly registered, and as wellgranting that, from an objective perspective, theamount of effort required to do so is quite minimal,the reality nevertheless remains that individuals stillneed to exercise some initiative. And, again, every-thing that is known about the facilitation and inhibi-tion of participation would anticipate a drop inparticipation as these demands, modest as they maybe, are placed on the prospective voter. Given the cir-cumstances and the demographics involved, the nega-tive effect is likely to be accentuated among those whofrequently move, such as renters and poorer persons,as well as among those entering the electorate. Manysuch individuals are already less prone to vote, whichis why there have long been disparities in turnoutacross social categories. A registration regime thatdemands some action on the part of such individualsmay very well run the risk of creating even largergaps. Unfortunately, such concerns about diminishedparticipation and participation equality, arguably themain disadvantages associated with the new system,were largely ignored in the extensive research and dis-cussion that framed the understanding and argumentsabout the impact of a regime change.63

But what of the fact that matching the “effective-ness” of enumeration was set out as one of the crite-ria that the new system had to meet in order to beconsidered acceptable? In particular, The Register ofElectors Project claimed that its background studieshad shown that a new permanent-list approach,drawing upon a variety of sources to establish theregister and keep it reasonably up to date, and, fur-thermore, incorporating an enhanced revisionprocess, could in the final analysis equal the coverageand accuracy levels realized through enumeration.Does this not, then, constitute relevant research aboutmatching the data quality of the old system, and thus

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meted to 61.2 percent for the 2000 election. The lastfigure was the subject of much commentary, not onlybecause it helped confirm the negative trend since1988, but also because it established a new record forthe worst turnout ever documented in a federal elec-tion, eclipsing the record low of 63 percent set in 1896.Not surprisingly, the drop in electoral participation hasbeen regarded as being serious enough to prompt a fairamount of soul-searching as to its meaning for thenature and legitimacy of Canadian democracy.66 ChiefElectoral Officer Kingsley appears to have had this inmind when he mused aloud about the possible wisdomof instituting compulsory voting in Canada.67

There has also been a considerable amount ofscholarship vested in understanding why more andmore Canadians are voting less and less.68 While avariety of factors have been identified as contributingto lower turnout levels, much of the analysis hasfocused on generational effects, particularly the influxinto the electorate of young voters who are less inter-ested in and less knowledgeable about politics thantheir predecessors, and noticeably less inclined to par-ticipate than their similarly aged counterparts of ear-lier generations.69 This phenomenon is also a source ofparticipation inequality, insofar as turnout disparitieshave increased across age categories.

What bearing might the changeover in registrationregimes have had on the lower levels of participationobserved in recent elections? Has it had some impact,even of a secondary kind, on the post-1988 decline invoter turnout? The suggestion has, in fact, already beenmade that the move to a register can be ruled out as anexplanation for the drop in turnout observed in the lastthree elections, simply because the decline began wellbefore the new system came fully into effect with the2000 election.70 This idea finds additional support in theobservation that voter turnout has declined in manyother countries as well, so perhaps the Canadian expe-rience is simply part of a broader trend.71

Still, such a line of argumentation does not byitself foreclose the possibility that the NationalRegister of Electors played a role in lowering turnoutin the 2000 election; it could be that turnout wouldhave been higher were it not for the operation of thenew registration process. Moreover, if this is true thenit is conceivable that the change in registrationregimes contributed, however modestly, to the declinein electoral participation at least across the 1997 and2000 pairing of elections.

A case could even be made that the move to a per-manent list is relevant for understanding some of the

the revision period and on voting day; indeed, it wouldbe strange had this not occurred given that an outdat-ed list was used in most of the country and election-day registration was a new arrangement. An analysisthat explored how easy or difficult individuals found itto register, how many did not do so because of regis-tration problems and the like, would have provided thebasis for a more convincing claim about success.Second, and more importantly, 80 percent is the targetfor a list unmaintained over a one-year period.However, Elections Canada had from the outset com-mitted itself to a strategy whereby the list would beupdated regularly, certainly multiple times within anygiven 12-month interval. Thus meeting the target of80 percent amounted to a lesser challenge. Still,Elections Canada has not exceeded that comparativelymodest goal by a large margin. Estimates of the dataquality of the National Register since June 1998 havegenerally ranged from 80 to 83 percent.64

Part 2: The Impact onParticipation

I n evaluating the consequences associated with thechange in registration method, the greatest empha-sis is placed here on the electoral involvement of

Canadians. Such a focus is in keeping with the tradi-tion in Canada of considering the facilitation of voterparticipation as the primary objective of a registrationregime. As was noted above, however, ElectionsCanada ended up paying less attention to participationconcerns than it ought to have done as it developedthe case for the adoption of a register. This raises thequestion of whether or not its limited focus on partici-pation has resulted in any negative outcomes.

The fact that voter turnout in Canada has droppedso precipitously in the last few elections is another rea-son why an emphasis on participation is warranted. Upuntil the 1988 contest, voter turnout over the postwarperiod averaged around 75 percent and while this fig-ure is low relative to turnout in most other long-established democracies, Canadian turnout did notdrift noticeably upwards or downwards over the peri-od.65 A dramatically new pattern, however, has beenestablished over the course of the last three elections.Participation, as officially recorded (votes cast as apercentage of registered voters), dropped to 69.6 per-cent for the 1993 election, underwent another declineto 67.0 percent for the 1997 contest and then plum-

that a smaller proportion of those registered under apermanent-list method will vote compared to the tradi-tional postwrit enumeration system. This follows sim-ply because the compilation of the voters list afreshand in close proximity to the election translates intosituations where individuals are more likely to be listedat their current address and to have received the subse-quent information they require in order to cast theirballot; put differently, the timeliness of the postwritenumeration process implies fewer listing errors andother problems requiring action. In contrast, permanentlists (at least those based on a volunteer system) cannotmatch this level of currency, because they cannot trackand instantaneously record Canada’s high level of pop-ulation mobility; consequently, the register’s prelimi-nary list will contain a large number of individualslisted at outdated addresses.

The need for remedial action, or lack thereof, on thepart of electors is not the only way of understandinghow registration effects may influence participation.Under the traditional system, personal contact with enu-merators on the doorstep may very well have acted as astimulus enhancing the probability that individuals votebeyond their existing predispositions to do so. Underthe new regime, it seems unlikely that receipt of a card,even one that contains the correct information, will initself make much of a difference. A more certain casecan be made for contacting in connection with the can-vassing efforts of parties and candidates. In their studyof the 2000 election, Blais et al. determined that, allthings being equal, “the likelihood of voting increasedby five percentage points when someone had been con-tacted by a political party.”73 However, electors who areimproperly recorded on the register are unlikely to bemobilized by the parties; they risk being missed duringthe course of the campaign because the parties relyheavily on the preliminary lists.74

That said, it is somewhat problematic to draw infer-ences about registration effects for the entire period inquestion on the basis of the official voter turnout meas-ure. (As will be seen, the specific 2000 election lendsitself to a more certain investigation of the link betweenregistration circumstances and turnout.) The fluctuationsin voter participation across the elections in question areinfluenced by so many factors, including generationalreplacement, that it is nearly impossible to attribute spe-cific effects to the registration circumstances in whichindividuals found themselves. The challenge of drawinginferences is compounded, ironically enough, by theerrors of inclusion that attend the permanent-listapproach, mainly because of the delay in purging names

broader post-1988 decline. After all, the 1993 elec-tion was conducted, outside of Quebec, on the basisof a registration process that had some of the hall-marks of a permanent-list approach.72 The reuse ofthe year-old 1992 list meant a correspondingly heavyreliance on revision and polling-day registration tohandle subsequent changes and additions, whichmight have resulted in lower participation because ofthe greater effort involved in registering. As for the1997 election, it was, of course, preceded by the lastenumeration held before the formal adoption of theNational Register. However, as discussed below, thatparticular canvassing effort did not conform exactlyto standard or ideal practices, which leaves someroom for doubt about its interpretation vis-à-vis thefacilitation of voting.

As will be seen, the extent to which the implica-tions of the change in registration regimes can belinked to broader patterns of turnout decline (in addi-tion to whatever impact it may have had in the spe-cific 2000 election) depends, in part, on the approachtaken to characterize the dependent variable. Twosorts of measures are available to gauge the registra-tion-participation relationship: the standard turnoutmeasure defined by votes cast as a percentage of reg-istered voters, and eligibility measures. The latterallow for investigation of the variability in the “cov-erage” of the registration process as it has a bearingon the overall turnout rate. With registration as anecessary condition for voting, turnout is naturallydecreased as large numbers of adult citizens areexcluded from the lists. Put differently, eligibilitymeasures, by benchmarking the number of votes castrelative to the number of eligible citizens, index voterturnout while taking into account the operation ofthe registration regime.

Official Turnout in 1984–2000The utility of the turnout measure defined by votescast as a percentage of registered voters stems from itsstatus as the official measure, as published by ElectionsCanada, for documenting voter turnout in the countryand, of course, from its long-time use by students ofCanadian elections. Its pertinence here, however, arisesfrom its value as an index of participation when thefocus is on how easy or difficult it is for those alreadyregistered to follow through and cast their vote.

In this regard, it is pertinent to recall the near-truism that the level of participation is inverselyrelated to the amount of effort required to carry outthe activity in question. This leads to the expectation

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that contest, using Elections Canada’s estimates ofsurpluses,78 is 67.8 percent, which represents a quitesubstantial five-point drop from 1993. This compareswith a decline of only 2.6 percent based on the offi-cial, unadjusted tallies. The fact that the corrected fig-ure lies within a percentage point of the unadjustedone (67.0 percent) reflects the fact that the 1997 elec-tion, based largely on a canvassing effort within twomonths of voting day, had fewer errors of inclusion.

The drop in turnout associated with the 2000election would also appear to be “real.” The officialturnout rate plunged to 61.2 percent, a decline ofalmost six points (5.8 percent), while the adjustedfigure of 63.6 percent (again calculated usingElections Canada information)79 still represents asubstantial four-point drop (4.2 percent).Nonetheless, the difference between the official andreworked figures — about two and a half points — isfar from trivial and rivals in magnitude the adjust-ment made for the 1993 election. The recalculatedfigure itself takes into account an estimated 614,000duplicates on the final list of voters and 177,000individuals who had passed away since beinginscribed on the National Register.

(those individuals who are no longer part of the elec-torate because they have emigrated or passed away)and in correcting duplicate listings (those individualswho have reregistered following a move but are listedat their former address as well as their current one).These inaccuracies make it difficult to sort out howmuch the declining turnout figures reflect the problemsfaced by registered electors as they sought to partici-pate and how much is due to the existence of “impos-sible voters” picked up in the denominator of theturnout measure.75

However, one registration-based effect can be dis-cerned in connection with the standard measure: thesurplus names and redundant listings have created theappearance of a lower level of participation than actu-ally prevailed. The artificially deflated turnout figuresthat result are not a particularly attractive by-productof the permanent-list method, as Canada’s lower-than-average turnout rates hardly need to be exaggerated.

This inflationary effect is demonstrated in Figure 1by showing the turnout rates for the last five electionsas officially reported and as adjusted, drawing uponexisting information and research that provide thebasis for estimating (and thus subtracting) extra namesand listings. It is quite apparent that the adjusted fig-ures do transform the pattern of decline over time.Information is not available, it should be noted, tomodify the official turnout figure of 75.3 percent forthe two postwrit enumeration elections in 1984 and1988. This is unfortunate because, even though inthose elections the registration process was done fromscratch and in close proximity to the election, therewere no doubt some errors of inclusion — such as stu-dents being redundantly registered by their parents intheir home constituency. That said, the number oferrors would have been far less compared to whattranspired in connection with list-based elections.

For the 1993 election, the official turnout rate is69.6 percent and the corrected figure is 72.9 percent,which is the average of two near-equal estimates ofsimilar magnitude, one (72.7 percent) derived fromElections Canada’s reckoning of the number of dupli-cates and deceased on the final voters list,76 the other(73.1 percent) taken from an independent analysiscarried out by Blais et al.77 The reworked percentagesuggests a more modest impression of the magnitudeof turnout decline between 1988 and 1993; indeed thenew figure is not far from the 75 percent benchmarkand is well within the range of variation around thatnorm. The drop in participation really began inearnest with the 1997 election. The adjusted figure for

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Figure 1Turnout and Registration Coverage in FederalElections, 1984-2000

Notes1Surplus names and duplicate listings removed from the total number of individu-als registered (1993, 1997 and 2000 elections only). Source: Official turnout figures taken from reports of the chief electoral officer.Other figures taken either directly or calculated from Elections Canada, StatisticsCanada, IDEA and other sources.

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one another rather than as precise point estimates. Ofcourse, the fact that elections in the 1984–2000 periodwere carried out based on either enumeration or per-manent-list principles allows for the comparison ofcoverage rates using the two methods. The enumerationelections of 1984 and 1988 were followed by reuse ofthe 1992 referendum voters list for the 1993 election(again, outside Quebec), by an enumeration process forthe 1997 election and finally by a full application ofthe National Register in 2000.

The top graph line in Figure 1 indicates that cover-age did decrease over the last three elections but not ina pattern that suggests that the decline is strictly asso-ciated with list-based methods.82 Coverage droppednearly three percentage points after the 1988 electionand, importantly, did not rise with the enumeration-based contest in 1997. For 1984 and 1988, the registra-tion effort is estimated to have reached 94.9 percentand 96 percent, respectively, of the eligible population.Inclusion decreased to 93.3 percent for the 1993 elec-tion, dropped further to 92.2 percent in 1997 and thenrose slightly to 93.1 percent in 2000.

Taking these statistics at face value, the interpreta-tion must be that coverage declined noticeably in thelast three elections and that neither registration methodwas able to match previous levels. There is, moreover, aplausible basis for such a conclusion, and it involvestwo characterizations. One would be that the permanentlists performed as expected and ended up capturingfewer individuals than the enumeration method hadbeen able to do in 1984 and 1988. The second wouldinvolve acknowledging that the employment of enumer-ation in the more contemporary period can no longerequal its past achievements. This latter conclusion, ofcourse, would square with the argument of diminishingquality and coverage that had been put forward as areason for abandoning enumeration. Indeed, in his offi-cial report on the 1997 election,83 the chief electoralofficer pointed out that there were challenges in gettingthe political parties to supply a sufficient number ofnames for enumerators and that returning officers had,as a consequence, to turn to other sources. No exact fig-ures are cited, though the report does go on to specifythat there were problems finding enough enumerators inthe west end of Toronto and in Newfoundland (p. 45).

Without wishing to dispute the reality of this short-age as a factor, it remains unclear whether enumerationproblems, per se, were solely or even largely responsi-ble for the relatively lower coverage level recorded inthe 1997 election. Other factors — not necessarily asso-ciated with the application of the enumeration method

The other comment to make about the adjusted fig-ure for 2000 is that its acceptance would remove thatelection from the record books as having the lowestturnout ever, allowing the 1896 contest to once againclaim that dubious honour. Still, no amount of adjust-ment can alter the fundamental fact that voter declinein recent elections is real and deserves the attention ithas received as a prominent feature of contemporarypolitical behaviour in Canada.

Coverage and Eligibility in 1984–2000Typically, the number of individuals who meet thestatutory age requirement is taken to denote the pool ofeligible voters. In traditional immigrant-receiving soci-eties, however, it is advisable to use citizenship as wellas age to circumscribe the eligible population. Two ver-sions of such measures are relevant here, a more impor-tant one that allows for direct measurement of thecoverage achieved by the registration method by divid-ing the number inscribed by the number eligible, and asecond, derivative measure that relates votes cast to thepotential number of eligible voters.

In both cases, the same orthodoxy specifying aninverse relationship between the requirement of indi-vidual initiative and participation also anticipates lesscoverage (and less voting) in the new system relativeto the traditional one. The state’s more decidedlyproactive approach in the past meant that eligiblevoters had to do little to get their names on the vot-ers list. Moreover, the fact that the compilation ofnames was carried out in close proximity to electionday meant that new 18-year-olds and new citizenswere more likely to be included. By contrast, thosenot already on the permanent list would need to takesome action, however minimal, to be included on theelectoral rolls. Furthermore, being unregistered, theseindividuals are also more likely to be overlooked inthe campaigning efforts of parties and candidates.

The adjusted registration data can be retained asthe analysis shifts to consider what conclusionsmight be reached about coverage (and thus participa-tion) differences over the same 1984–2000 period.80

Of prime interest is the comparative performance ofthe enumeration and list systems in capturing theoptimal number of eligible voters. The informationneeded to estimate the eligible population in terms ofage and citizenship comes mainly from ElectionsCanada and Statistics Canada. Because these popula-tion figures are estimates,81 as are the adjusted regis-tration statistics for the last three elections, coveragerates are best considered in broad juxtaposition with

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chased the final lists of registered voters that had beengenerated for the preceding provincial elections, heldin April 1996 and March 1997, respectively. Given thenumbers of eligible voters involved, the use ofAlberta’s list is particularly troubling. Not only wasthat list several months old by the time the electiontook place (in June), but it was a product of theprovince’s register-based system, which, in turn, hadbeen based on a November 1996 general enumeration.Thus, the purchased list was susceptible to error, and tothe extent that there was a substantial number oferrors of exclusion (presumably, as a function ofAlberta’s rapid population growth), this could havebeen a source of the lower coverage. Second, the enu-meration process carried out in the rest of the countrytook place slightly earlier than usual, leaving room forfurther slippage. Instead of taking place between 35and 29 days before the election (as had been the casein Quebec for the 1993 election), the final April enu-meration was carried out between 53 and 47 daysahead of voting day. While this change extended thelag time by a mere two and one-half weeks, it wouldhave resulted in some individuals being missed. To besure, each of these deviations by itself would beexpected to play only a minor role in explaining thelower overall coverage, but together their cumulativeimpact could be significant in a context where addi-tional factors were at play.

If these facts suggest that adequate coverage is stillpossible with enumeration, Elections Canada might, inrebuttal, point to the evidence of enumeration-likeproblems with the 2000 election in the context of its“targeted revision” efforts. Targeted revision is aprocess by which a pair of agents call on residents inspecifically designated areas during the second week ofthe election period. “In general, they concentrated onrecently developed areas such as new subdivisions,areas known for high mobility, including clusters ofapartment buildings and student residents, and institu-tions such as nursing homes and chronic care hospi-tals.”86 This process, which is very much akin toenumeration, is, of course, intended to compensate forthe limitations in coverage and currency associatedwith maintained lists. Altogether, about 515,000 addi-tional addresses were targeted in this manner. “Thetargeted revision exercise provided effective coverageof high-mobility areas,” concluded the report on the2000 election.87 In making the point about coverageproblems with enumeration, however, ElectionsCanada could have emphasized that 29 percent of theaddresses called upon failed to produce a response at

— could have been equally or more important. In thisregard, it is significant to note that elsewhere,Kingsley’s report on the 1997 general election callsattention to the “intense activity” that the agencyentered into within the tight time frame they had fol-lowing the passage of Bill C-63: “While revisingmanuals and forms to reflect the latest amendmentsto the Act, we also had to provide the necessarytraining for returning officers and their key staff inpreparation for the last enumeration” (p. 42). Moreimportantly, the report goes on to note that, becauseof redistribution, three-quarters of the 271 returningofficers who were to oversee the final enumerationwere new appointees and, moreover, that their selec-tion had been a slow process:

Because of the delays in the appointment process,despite the training efforts of Elections Canada,many returning officers did not have time toassimilate the many manuals and proceduralguidelines for their tasks before they plunged intoan enumeration and election. (p. 42)

Insofar as these time pressures might have had abearing on the quality of the registration effort — andcommon sense suggests that they must have had, atsome level — then attributing the low coverage in1997 to a shortage of enumerators (and other enu-merator-elector contact problems) is not such astraightforward matter.

There are additional grounds for questioningwhether the coverage rate in that election can betaken as a valid indicator of a generally diminishedcapacity on the part of the enumeration method. Onepiece of evidence, interestingly enough, comes fromthe 1993 election. In that year, Elections Canadaregarded the enumeration drive that had been carriedout in Quebec — an effort that arguably more closelyconformed to standard enumeration practices — as agreat success. Indeed, in its report the agency boaststhat it managed to reach 98 percent of Quebec’s eligi-ble population.84 It gives no information on how thatfigure was derived or how this high level of coveragewas achieved,85 but such a figure by itself more thansuggests that enumeration could still, in the early1990s, be carried out quite effectively.

The registration process bound up with the last enu-meration featured not only tight time frames, ridingredistribution and the slow appointment of returningofficers; at least two other elements involving devia-tions from normal enumeration practice may havecontributed to the decreased coverage. First, in twoprovinces — Prince Edward Island and Alberta — therewere no enumerations; instead, Elections Canada pur-

cess on voter turnout in the 2000 election. That contestis of prime importance, of course, because it was thefirst one to be held with the new regime well in place.The National Register had been functioning for nearlythree and a half years when it was used to generate thepreliminary voters lists. Now, therefore, its performanceas an open-list system, based on the incorporation of acontinuous flow of updated elector information, can bemeaningfully assessed. A focus on that contest doesrequire, however, stepping back somewhat from mak-ing strong distinctions in the analysis of participationeffects according to whether or not an individual wasregistered. This is because a large number of peoplewere in “in between” situations, such as having theirname listed, but at an old or incorrect address. Apartfrom these “incorrect” registrations, factors such asreceipt of a voter information card and manner ofreceipt would have made a difference. Nevertheless, itis possible to demonstrate that the less than ideal regis-tration circumstances in which many individuals foundthemselves — including, most fundamentally, not beingregistered at all when the preliminary voters lists weregenerated — had an inhibiting effect on participation.

A variety of information sources allow for this conclu-sion. To begin with, there was ample media coverage ofthe campaign that focused heavily on the administrativeaspects of the election, including various concerns aboutthe nature and functioning of the new registration system.There were also reactions by MPs, particularly members ofthe Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs,as they had an opportunity to conduct a post-mortem onthe election by questioning Kingsley directly. As well,Elections Canada carried out its own “post-event” analysisof the voter registration process in addition to otheraspects of the election.89 Its summary report, in turn,draws upon survey-based information taken from, amongother individuals and organizations, 60 randomly selectedcandidates who ran for registered parties, 20 selected “rep-resentatives of registered political parties,”90 259 returningofficers and 49 academics who had signalled their interestin electoral matters. The report also cites some (summary)results of national surveys, including one conducted byIpsos-Reid on behalf of Elections Canada. As will be seen,that data set is used extensively as a basis for an inde-pendent analysis of the registration process and its impact.While the statistical work provides the most convincing,and certainly the most generalizable, evidence on registra-tion effects, the disparate sources of information essential-ly converge in producing a characterization of the newsystem as having operated in such a way as to haveinhibited voter turnout.

the doorstep, even after two visits (at which time amail-in package was left). Later, when asked about thepossibility of a return to the traditional system,Kingsley did use this statistic to illustrate the problem-atic nature of enumeration.88 In rebuttal, it could bepointed out that, given the areas that were designated,a 71-percent rate of contact is actually quite impres-sive and, moreover, a subset of those who were not athome or did not answer their door ended up register-ing by taking advantage of the mail-in package thathad been left. Indeed, the statistic might even be takento suggest the value of a three-visit canvass (at appro-priately altered times) for certain special areas, withthe routine two-visit mode used elsewhere. Clearly, theother point to make is that coverage in the 2000 elec-tion would have been lower without targeted revision.

In short, there is reason to believe that the use oflist-based approaches contributed, however modestly,to the recent decline in electoral coverage (and partici-pation). Key to this interpretation is seeing the 1997election as constituting only a weak test of the cover-age achieved with enumeration. Still, a more prudentperspective at this juncture would be to see this only asa plausible inference. A more certain one is that cover-age under the new regime has been inferior to whatenumeration was able to achieve in the past. Therefore,the commitment on the part of the advocates of a per-manent-list approach to maintain the high levels ofinclusion that had long characterized Canadian regis-tration practice has not yet been fulfilled.

Turnout and EligibilityFinally, and for the sake of completeness, Figure 1shows the overall participation rate by relating thenumber of votes cast to the number of eligible voters.Since this measure captures both registration cover-age and voting behaviour, it is to be expected that itrecords the lowest percentages across all elections.And, of course, it also picks up both the decliningcoverage that has occurred as well as the fact thatfewer Canadians have been voting. In the 1984 and1988 elections, 71.5 and 72.2 percent of the eligiblepopulation voted, while in 1993 only 68 percent didso; the figure falls off sharply to 62.5 percent for the1997 contest and drops again, to 59.2 percent, in2000. However it is measured, participation inCanadian federal elections has clearly been declining.

The 2000 ElectionThe evidence is much clearer on the impact — a nega-tive one, to be exact — of the new registration pro-

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sage was, “If you’re not on the voters’ list, you can’tvote. No, you can’t.” What transpired, of course, wasthat many individuals who did not receive a voterinformation card concluded (wrongly) that theywould be unable to vote. Similarly, some of thosewho received a card bearing the name of another per-son (e.g., the previous occupant of their dwelling)reached the same determination.

Parliamentary ScrutinyThe advertising campaign received even more intensecriticism from members of Parliament on the StandingCommittee on Procedure and House Affairs, who hadtheir first postelection opportunity to quiz the chiefelectoral officer and his staff formally on March 1,2001. Kingsley, who indicated that he had personallyapproved the advertisement, at first defended it, butyielded — “Okay, what we’re going to do is revise thead.”91 — after persistent challenges by one parliamen-tarian. That MP, John Reynolds of the CanadianAlliance, who was also the lead-off questioner, beganon a broader note by quoting from Elections Canada’sperformance report for 1999–2000, including positivedevelopments with regard to the National Register, butthen went on to say:

Now, it all sounds great, but at one other meet-ing before you got here, we heard that justabout every member on this committee has hada problem. As the whip of the party, I have abunch of notes from members who have realproblems…I had lots of complaints…from con-stituents, in that they just weren’t on the list.92

No doubt Reynolds’ annoyance was compoundedby the fact that his own name had been erroneouslyleft off the list.

Michel Guimond of the Bloc Québécois began bysignalling his sense that there were some generalproblems with the way in which the election hadbeen conducted, promised more queries at a secondmeeting and went on to ask about Elections Canada’supdating arrangements with Quebec. Still, he did feelthe need to make a general comment on the register:“On page 9 of your document, Mr. Kingsley, you stat-ed that, ‘The register met our expectations for themost part.’ I beg to differ slightly.”93

Libby Davis of the NDP was the next oppositionMP to speak, and she was unequivocal in her con-demnation:

I find it ironic that the information we’ve hadpresented today — these graphs and slides andso on that make the national registry look like asuccess story, even though there are some prob-lems — is vastly different from the experiencewe actually had on the ground. I consider all of

Media CommentaryThere is nothing surprising or new about the fact thatthe media chose to focus heavily on the problemssurrounding the registration and voting processes anddid not dwell so much on those aspects that workedwell. Certainly, past elections governed by the enu-meration method were not immune to critical reportsthat emphasized voters being missed in the canvass-ing effort, being given the wrong information aboutwhere to vote or confronting long queues in thepolling stations. Still, the heavy and persistent mediascrutiny of the difficulties and irregularities in the2000 election is quite striking. The following excerptsfrom a sampling of different newspapers are fairlyrepresentative of the tone of newspaper coverageright across the country:

Electors receiving their voter registration cardsshould avoid the temptation to toss them into aheap of unread mail. Many local residents arenoticing their cards list them as voters in thewrong riding, despite the fact they may havelived in the same place for decades. FrederictonDaily Gleaner (November 9)Glitches in the country’s computerized list offederal electors are angering voters in variousparts of the city. And their situations mirror simi-lar problems across the country as the NationalRegister of Electors makes its debut in this feder-al election. Some voters, particularly those innew housing developments, are not on the list atall, others have received faulty voter cards andstill others have seen their cards go astray to oldaddresses. Hamilton Spectator (November 15)The new system has created chaos in some con-stituencies, with angry voters objecting thatthey have received Elections Canada cards withwrong information, that they haven’t receivedcards or that they got more than one. EdmontonJournal (November 21)There were widespread reports of futile attemptsby voters to register on the list for the first time,as well as reports of wrong addresses for votersand even incidents where deceased citizens werestill on the list. Vancouver Sun (November 24)Voting across the country was marred by glitch-es yesterday as polling stations opened up tofour hours late and one in 10 Canadians arrivedready to cast their ballots only to find theirnames were not on the official voters list.National Post (November 28)

One of the specific themes taken up in the printmedia, but picked up as well by the broadcast media,was the confusing nature of Elections Canada’s tele-vision advertisements informing the public that theyhad to be listed in the National Register in order tovote. Clearly, the agency wanted as many people aspossible to register during the revision period in orderto avoid logjams on polling day, when it would stillbe possible to register. The exact wording of the mes-

information” form and mail it back to the agency.98 Tosummarize, there is no disagreement that the perma-nent list came up short with regard to registering newlyage-eligible voters.99

Elections Canada’s Post-MortemThe agency’s own assessment, drawn from the elitesources already mentioned, does not hide the difficultiesexperienced with the new registration regime. Its 2000General Election Post-event Overview notes that “a major-ity of candidates and political party representatives indi-cated a low degree of satisfaction” with the preliminarylists of voters generated by the National Register (p. 7)and that for their part returning officers reported having“to deal with widespread or major complaints about thepreliminary lists of electors, indicating that the accuracyof the lists did not meet their expectations” (p. 7).Academics were described as seeing no difficulty with theregistration procedures, though some “indicated that theprocess unduly put the onus on electors and required toomuch initiative from them, especially those who were lessinvolved or interested in the first place” (p. 7). Candidatesand political parties apparently were “neutral about mostaspects of voter registration,” but when opinions weregiven “they generally reported low satisfaction rates, par-ticularly with registration at advance polls and on pollingday, with the targeted revision process and with the accu-racy of revised lists of electors” (p. 8).

The Ipsos-Reid Survey100

Central to the use of survey data for deriving insightsinto the link between registration and participation is thesingle item that was employed to categorize the registra-tion status and circumstances of respondents. The ques-tion, structured around people’s experiences with thevoter information card, merits quoting in full:

Prior to the November 27th, 2000 Election youshould have received a “voter information card.”This card is approximately 5 inches by 9 inchesand would have provided you with informationabout the election, including where and when tovote. It also would have had your name andaddress and told you that you were on the voterslist. Which of the following most closely describesyour situation?” [READ, ACCEPT ONE RESPONSE].

The response possibilities were as follows (followedby the percentage distribution):101

Your voter information card came in the mail andwas correctly addressed to you personally (75.3)Your voter information card came in the mail, butthere was some personal information that wasincorrect (4.5)You got a voter information card with someoneelse’s name (2.2)

us, as MPs, as the real experts in thismatter…Within our own caucus, I know the firstthing we talked about when we got back herewas what happened on election day. Everybodyhad incredible stories of concerns and situationsthat took place.94

She went on to cite the specific problem of “dis-crimination against poor people and aboriginal peo-ple,” making it clear that, to her way of thinking, notonly did the permanent-list method depress turnoutin general but it had an especially debilitating effecton less favoured groups.

The theme of participation inequality was soundedeven earlier in the hearings by a Liberal MP, CarolynParrish, who first of all wondered if she needed tochange her position as a supporter of the register:

As a great advocate of a national registry, I havelived to eat my words. We had a rough time inthis election. We also had a rough time with thenational registry in the 1999 [Ontario] provincialelection. I don’t expect perfection, and I thinkit’ll probably take several elections to get thisthing ironed out and cleaned up, so I’m notgoing to throw the baby out with bathwaterquite yet.95

Her worry that the new registration method had anegative effect on turnout and equality were practi-cally the next words out of her mouth:

I’m more concerned about the voter turnout thanI am about anything else. I think the voterturnout was poor. A low voter turnout disenfran-chises the poorest and most disenfranchised peo-ple in society to start with. I think it was reallygood for the blue-haired ladies who have lived inmy riding for 60 years, because they were on thevoters list, they had property, nobody hassledthem, and they were fine. The teenagers didn’tget to vote, nor did new immigrants, people whohad moved recently, or the poor. Generally, societydoesn’t give a damn about those people, but I do— even if they vote NDP.96

While it is unclear how much of this criticismKingsley expected to hear, he cannot have been sur-prised by the concerns voiced about the particularsituation of young people. In preliminary remarks tothe committee, his top official responsible for theNational Register, Rennie Molnar, readily identifiedthis gap in coverage as an area in need of significantimprovement. Molnar allowed that only an estimated30 percent of eligible youths had been registeredwhen the lists were first generated (with a final regis-tered level of 55 to 60 percent).97 Kingsley himselfhad been quoted several times during the campaignas lamenting the fact that a huge majority of the esti-mated 400,000 Canadians who had turned 18 duringthe year had not registered in spite of ElectionsCanada’s outreach program; after all, all they had todo, he emphasized, was to sign a “confirmation of

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As will be seen below, there is support for charac-terizing these registration situations in this way, but itis also clear that the response categories are not per-fectly homogeneous; it seems that the response alter-natives could have been constructed with greaterprecision. No doubt most of those who did not receivea card were indeed not registered, but a small subset ofthose listed might have simply failed to receive theircard because of address errors. As well, some of thoseregistered might have moved into a dwelling whoseprevious occupant had not been listed. Similarly, thecircumstances of those who received a card addressedto someone else could have varied, some having beenalready registered at their old address, others not.Furthermore, it is not inconceivable that some individ-uals did not move at all but received another person’scard simply because it was incorrectly addressed. Thecategory comprising those who took the initiative toobtain their voter information card poses anotherproblem from a methodological point of view. In par-ticular, it conflates not being registered — including,presumably, not having received a card — with the tak-ing of subsequent action. This makes the category dis-tinctive because none of the others has purposefullycaptured the motivation to register. (Subsequent analy-sis will show that this does indeed make the categorystand apart somewhat.) Incidentally, insofar as some ofthese individuals did not receive a card then this sug-gests that the nonrecipient level might be higher than14.5 percent. Finally, judging from media reports, asmall subset of those who received a card with incor-rect personal information may have been given wronginformation about where to vote.

Still, it appears that this ordering of registrationstatuses, if not ideal, does tap the various situationsin which people found themselves, at least in a rudi-mentary way. Table 1 helps to demonstrate this bydisplaying how some registration situations are, asexpected, more likely to be bound up with certain ageand income categories. One premise is that youngerand poorer Canadians are more likely to have hadsuboptimal registration experiences, largely becausethey are more likely to be renters or to change resi-dences frequently. As anticipated, age exhibits thesharpest pattern with registration status. Amongthose between the ages of 18 and 24, only one inevery two individuals (48.9 percent) received a cor-rectly addressed card with accurate information, andamong those between 25 and 34 years old, only twoof three (66 percent) had this ideal registration expe-rience. The percentage continues to rise for the next

You never got a voter information card (14.5)You had to make some sort of enquiry (forexample, a phone call or e-mail) to get your ownvoter information card (3.0)

Taken at face value, the responses would appear tosupport Elections Canada’s estimates of the “dataquality” of the register. Among the respondents, 75.3percent indicated that they had received the card withcorrect information. Presumably, one could add tothis figure the 4.5 percent who had received a proper-ly addressed card (or at least correct enough toreceive it) even though the card contained some inac-curacies about the elector’s personal information. Theresulting total of 79.8 percent is not too far removedfrom the sort of figures that the agency had beengenerating as estimates of the percentage of individu-als listed at the correct address.

At the same time, the survey figures are probablytoo generous to be taken as corroboration for thosedata quality estimates. As with most election surveys,the sample probably overrepresented the more inter-ested and informed individuals among the citizenry.This is strongly suggested by the very high turnoutlevel of 81 percent reported by the survey respon-dents, a figure that is a far cry from the actual levelof participation. No doubt this inflation is partly theproduct of nonvoters falsely reporting having voted,but it could be partly the result of politically engagedand motivated individuals (those likely to be regis-tered and to vote) being disproportionately represent-ed in the sample.

Nonetheless, the survey still managed to capture asignificant number of Canadians who were in less thanideal registration situations and who would have need-ed to undertake some remedial action in order to vote.Among these, the largest category (14.5 percent) com-prised people who reported not having received a cardat all; presumably these were primarily individuals whowere simply not recorded on the National Register. Afurther 2.2 percent indicated that they had receivedsomeone else’s card; likely these were mostly individu-als who had moved into a dwelling unit previouslyinhabited by a person who was registered. The ordinaryexpectation is that remedying these various registrationsituations would require different levels of engagementand effort. The anticipation is that those with onlyincorrect personal information would need to take theleast action, while those who had received someoneelse’s card would need to make somewhat more of aneffort and those who had received no card at all wouldhave to take the most steps to get on the list.102

situation, while 31.2 percent received no card (specificdata not shown).104

The survey offers additional perspectives on the vari-ous registration experiences of Canadians in the lastelection. An important insight is available from a line ofquestioning that asked individuals who did not receive acard with the correct information and address whether ornot they took any action to rectify their registration sta-tus. Those who responded in the affirmative werequeried about whether they thought the process waseasy or difficult. The data indicate that a substantial pro-portion of people either failed to act or regarded theprocess as difficult when they did try to do so.Altogether, nearly one-third (30.9 percent) of those whoreceived a card with incorrect personal information,someone else’s card or no card at all did nothing toadjust the irregularity. A further 15.7 percent of theseindividuals took action but reported that they found the

process difficult or very difficult. In other words, nearlyone-half of the individuals (46.6 percent) in less thanoptimal registration circumstances either failed to followthrough as hoped for or, if they did, found the processwanting.105 Table 2 breaks down this figure for the vari-ous registration categories: 41.4 percent for those whohad only personal information to amend, 44.4 percentfor those who received another person’s card and 51.8percent for those who received no card. Roughly, then,inaction and perception of difficulty increased accordingto the amount of remedial action required. This helpssubstantiate the value of distinguishing among the cate-gories, imperfect as they are. The data also reveal thatthere were undesirable registration results even whenrelatively little remedial action was required.

Table 2 presents results for three other variables thatilluminate further aspects of Canadians’ reaction to the

two age brackets, reaching 82.7 percent for thosebetween 35 and 64 and 91.5 percent for those 65 andover. Most of these differences are mirrored in thecorresponding percentages associated with the mostunfavourable situation, not having received a card.Over one-third (34.5 percent) of the youngest adultsand almost one-fifth (19.7 percent) of those in thenext age bracket claimed that this was their experi-ence. By contrast, only 10.2 and 3.3 percent of thosebetween the ages of 35 and 64 and those 65 and over,respectively, did not receive a card.103 Apart from this,younger Canadians were also modestly more likely totake the initiative to register, capturing, it wouldappear, that comparatively small and exceptionalsegment of young people with the motivation andinterest to participate.

The pattern for income is also as expected, againsuggesting that the registration status categories are

measuring at least basic differences. Those with anincome of less than $20,000 had the least favourableexperiences. Among these individuals — the poorestCanadians — 66.7 percent found themselves correctlyregistered, while 22.6 percent responded that they hadfailed to receive a card. Registration circumstances areslightly better for those with incomes between $20,000and $39,999, at 73 and 15.4 percent, respectively.Those in the two higher income brackets were alsobetter off with regard to registration, with the corre-sponding percentages hovering around 80 percent forbeing correctly registered and 12 percent for failing toreceive a card. Finally, and in part overlapping withthe above data, part-time and full-time students werealso prone to be in registration situations where someremedial measures were necessary. Only 50.0 percentof students found themselves in the ideal registration

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Table 1Voter Registration Status by Age, Income (percent)

Age Income

Less than $20,000- $40,000-Registration status 18–24 25–34 35–64 65+ $20,000 39,999 59,999 $60,000+

Correctly registered 48.9 66.0 82.7 91.5 66.7 73.0 79.0 79.5Personal information 5.8 5.8 3.8 3.6 3.5 5.9 5.4 3.3

incorrectReceived another’s card 2.2 5.2 1.3 1.2 3.8 2.8 1.3 1.8Received no card 34.5 19.7 10.2 3.3 22.6 15.4 11.6 12.7Took initiative to get card 8.6 3.3 2.0 0.3 3.5 2.8 2.8 2.7(N) (362) (483) (1,280) (329) (372) (597) (542) (738)

Source: Based on data provided by Elections Canada from a random telephone survey of 2,500 Canadians conducted by Ipsos-Reid between November 28 andDecember 11. While the survey oversampled individuals between the ages of 18 and 34, the weighted version is used here. According to Ipsos Reid, it is ”representa-tive of Canada’s age and gender composition in accordance with 1996 Census data.“

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6.6), suggesting that Elections Canada might havedone more in this area. The lowest ratings occur inconnection with the third item, which recorded senti-ment about motivation, in particular, whether theregistration and voter information “encouraged me tovote.” Less than half the sample (45.4 percent) repliedin the affirmative, while a substantial 37.3 percentindicated disagreement (Mean = 5.2). Although itmight be argued that some part of this responsereflects the low-stimulus (e.g., noncompetitive) natureof the election itself, the question does after all referto administrative rather than political aspects of theelection over which the agency had some control.

The breakdowns shown suggest, not surprisingly, thatregistration status made a considerable difference inindividuals’ assessment of the information flow. In gen-eral, the more the registration circumstances deviatedfrom the ideal, the lower the likelihood of respondentsrating the information as clear and understandable, ofsufficient quantity and as having encouraged them tovote. Thus, while 88.5 percent of those who receivedan entirely accurate card and 85.6 percent of those

new regime. All respondents were asked to rate, on a0-to-10 agree-disagree scale, the flow of informationon “how to get on the voters list and about whereand when to vote.” The results are presented in twoways, with mean scores for the original 11-pointmeasure and percentages for the agree, neutral anddisagree (collapsed) portions of the scale. The firstitem shown asked whether the information on regis-tering and voting was “clear and easy to understand.”For the sample as a whole, the response was quitefavourable, with more than 8 in 10 people (82.9 per-cent) agreeing that this was indeed the case (Mean =8.0). Given what was widely reported about the con-fusing nature of the “Are you on the list” advertisingcampaign, this perhaps suggests that many Canadiansdid not, in fact, find it to be confusing (or, at leastnot consciously so). However, as noted below, therewere differences across the various registration situa-tions. On the second item, respondents were less like-ly to agree that there was “enough information.” Only62.9 percent agreed that they had received sufficientinformation, while 30.4 percent disagreed (Mean =

Table 2Correction Process and Attitudes Towards Registration and Voting Information, by Registration Status(percent)

Registration status

Correctly Personal Received Received Took initiativeAll registered info. incorrect another’s card no card to get card

(a) Took no action or foundcorrection process difficult/verydifficult 46.6 -- 41.4 44.4 51.8 --(N) (528) (111) (54) (363)

(b) Registration and voting information

Clear and easy to understandAgree 82.9 88.5 85.6 77.8 53.6 82.7Neutral 6.0 5.1 4.5 9.3 11.1 4.0Disagree 11.1 6.4 9.9 13.0 35.3 13.3Mean 8.0 8.5 8.2 7.6 5.6 7.7

Enough informationAgree 62.9 66.4 64.0 63.0 44.4 59.5Neutral 6.7 5.5 9.9 7.4 11.4 9.5Disagree 30.4 28.0 26.1 29.6 44.2 31.1Mean 6.6 6.9 6.8 6.2 5.0 6.3

Encouraged voteAgree 45.4 48.8 46.8 31.5 28.7 50.7Neutral 17.3 17.7 20.7 25.9 13.5 15.1Disagree 37.3 33.5 32.4 42.6 57.7 34.2Mean 5.2 5.5 5.2 4.6 3.6 5.2(N)1 (2,456-76) (1,849-68) (111) (54) (351-60) (73-75)

Notes:1 Sample numbers vary because the number of respondents for these questions varied. Source: See table 1.

matically raised the stakes and demanded that thegreatest priority be given to facilitating the registrationof the millions of unlisted or incorrectly listedCanadians. Without effective communication with thispopulation, it is hard to fathom how their participationcould be facilitated.

The Impact on ParticipationThe most important aspect of the new registry systemto explore is, of course, its direct impact on voting inthe November 2000 election, and not only in connec-tion with turnout in general but as well the implica-tions that it had for participation inequality acrosssocial categories. With regard to the broader dimension,the pertinent question is not so much whether higherregistration thresholds led to less voting, since theexpectation of some sort of a negative effect is wellgrounded in the literature. Additionally, there is theplain but important fact that a substantial number ofsurvey respondents reported that they did not regular-ize their registration circumstances, and thus many ofthem would not have been able to vote. What is reallyat issue, then, is the magnitude of the impact on voterturnout associated with less than optimal registrationexperiences.

It would appear that registration status indeedexerted a strong influence on voter turnout. Table 3provides an initial sense of this by setting out the voterparticipation rates for individuals in the different regis-tration circumstances. Putting aside the category ofthose who took the initiative to get registered (90.7percent of whom voted), the effects are conspicuouslymonotonic. For respondents in the most favourableregistration situation — those who received a card withcorrect information — 88.3 percent ended up voting.Turnout fell, but only modestly, to 82.9 percent, forthose who received a card with some incorrect personalinformation. However, the decline is noticeably greater,down to 72.2 percent, for those who received a cardaddressed to someone else. Finally, the lowest partici-pation level and the biggest drop across categoriesoccur in connection with those who received no card atall, with barely half, or 51.2 percent, indicating thatthey had cast a ballot. This represents a huge gapbetween the two extreme registration situations.

Closer inspection of the data, involving a multivari-ate orientation, strengthens the inference that registra-tion status had a direct and substantial bearing onlower levels of voter turnout in 2000. A follow-up onthe bivariate perspective is necessary to ensure that theresults reported above are not masking other effects,

who received a card with incorrect personal dataagreed that the information was clear and understand-able, the figure diminishes somewhat (to 77.8 percent)for those who received someone else’s card and tum-bles dramatically to 53.6 percent for those whoreceived no card at all (Mean = 8.5, 8.2, 7.6 and 5.6,respectively). Clearly, the positive assessment of thequality of the information, seen in connection with theentire sample, does not hold across the board, espec-ially for those who did not get a card. These same indi-viduals were also less likely to respond that they hadreceived “enough information” — only 44.4 percentprovided positive replies compared to 63 to 66 percentfor individuals in other registration circumstances.Assessments of whether the information encouragedparticipation also form a pattern, with both receivingsomeone else’s card and not receiving a card appar-ently making a difference. Of those who received acompletely correct card, 48.8 percent indicated thatthey were encouraged to vote as a result; this is true ofonly 31.5 percent for those who received another’scard and only 28.7 percent for those who received nocard at all (Mean = 5.5, 4.6 and 3.6, respectively).

In short, these figures reveal that the flow of regis-tration and voter information was regarded as partic-ularly inadequate by those who were most in need ofmore and clearer guidance, and perhaps stimulation.No doubt, some of the responses could be the resultof rationalizing by individuals who were predisposednot to vote and therefore downplayed or did notrecall the information they had come across; still,there is no reason to assume that such a phenomenonoverwhelms all other interpretations. And, of course,at a basic level it makes sense that individuals whodid not receive a card would, naturally, be those mostlikely to indicate limited informational effects.

What of the counterclaim that these results speaknot so much to the principles of the new regime as tothe particulars of how the information campaign wasconceived and put into place? No doubt, this is true tosome extent and future campaigns will likely bedesigned, recalling Kingsley’s pledge, to reflect someprogress on the learning curve. Still, it is not entirelyinappropriate to view the inadequacies as being inher-ent elements of the new regime. From the very begin-ning, after all, the plan to develop and implement apermanent-list system called for a huge effort to bemade during the election period to pick up the slack,to capture the very large numbers expected whowould not be listed or would be listed incorrectly. Inother words, the decision to develop a register auto-

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regression runs are all binary, the regression coeffi-cients record the turnout level of the category inquestion relative to the level of the omitted category.Thus, the coefficient -.31 for those 18 to 24 years ofage records a participation gap of 31 points comparedto those 65 and over. By itself, that result reiteratesthe widely documented fact that Canada’s youngestadults (i.e., newer “generations”) vote at much lowerlevels. Also as expected is the overall pattern for theset of age variables, which reveals a narrowing vot-ing deficit as age increases. As well, these initialresults confirm both income and education as havinga bearing on turnout (those who are less well off andless educated vote at lower levels than their moreprivileged counterparts), though the impact is lessthan the effect associated with age. The regressioncoefficient of -.17 for Aboriginal people indicates lessparticipation on their part relative to otherCanadians, even after taking age and socioeconomicstatus into account. Altogether, this small collectionof variables explains about 11 percent of the varia-tion in turnout in the sample as indicated by the(adjusted) R2 statistic of .106.

The level of explanation rises somewhat, to .169,when the variables tapping registration status areincorporated for the second step, signifying that theymake an additional contribution in accounting for whodoes and does not vote. More to the point, the infer-ence attributing an inhibiting effect to registration issustained in this phase of the multivariate analysis.Clearly, some registration experiences do have a bear-ing on participation independently of age, educationand income (and Aboriginal origin), and, moreover, themost important ones have negative consequences. Thelargest such effect is associated with not receiving acard, which is clearly indicated by the (statistically sig-nificant) regression coefficient of -.28; relative to thosewho were correctly registered, this registration condi-tion amounts to a substantial 28-point deficit inturnout. For its part, receiving a card addressed toanother person translated into a turnout decline of 13points, also a fairly sizeable impact. There was evi-dently no effect for those who received cards with onlyincorrect personal information (-.02). Finally, there wasa small positive effect for those who took the initiativeto get registered, reinforcing the view that these indi-viduals are distinguished by their motivation.

Factoring in registration also leads to an adjustment ofthe effects of certain other variables. Note in particularthat the coefficient for the lowest age category decreasesto -.23 (from -.31), implying that unfavourable registra-

including the possibility that they are merely pickingup the typical nonvoting habits of certain socialgroups, particularly the young and the poor (whowere, to begin with, also less likely to be properlyregistered or registered at all). While it can be arguedthat logistic regression is the more appropriate mul-tivariate technique to employ in light of the nominaldependent variable (voted/not voted), results areshown based on OLS regression techniques becausethe coefficients generated for the independent vari-ables have a more conventional interpretation (theygauge the increment or decrement in the dependentvariable for a unit change in the independent vari-able in question, net of the other variables included).That said, parallel logistic analyses were carried outfor confirmation purposes, and revealed essentiallythe same effects.106 The first cut through the dataassembled virtually all of the demographic variablesavailable in the survey that could potentially exertsome influence on voter turnout. The list includedage, income, education, employment/student status,gender, province/region of residence, mother tongue,Aboriginal origin and nativity (whether Canadian- orforeign-born). These background characteristics wereincorporated as (0/1) dummy variables, as were theprimary items measuring registration status: “per-sonal information incorrect,” “received another’scard,” “received no card” and “took initiative to getcard,” leaving those correctly registered as the refer-ence category.

Only the demographic variables representing theeffects of age, education, income and Aboriginal ori-gin proved to be statistically significant and wereretained for subsequent, pared down, treatment. Theresults of this parsimonious approach are shown inTable 4 in three forms or models, the first serving asa baseline by capturing the effects of the demograph-ic variables alone, the second assessing the additionalinfluence of the registration experience measures andthe third adding potentially relevant attitudinal vari-ables. As the variables examined in the first two

Table 3Voter Turnout by Registration Status

Registration status % voting (N)

Correctly registered 88.3 (1,883)Personal information incorrect 82.9 (111)Received another’s card 72.2 (54)Received no card 51.2 (363)Took initiative to get card 90.7 (75)

Source: See table 1.

politically engaged, including making the effort toregister and vote. Indeed, insofar as they are conceptu-alized as antecedent variables, then one might wonderwhether the primary registration-vote relationshipsseen so far merely reflect underlying differences inpolitical predisposition.109

Not surprisingly, each of these variables has a statis-tically significant impact on turnout and collectivelythey ratchet up the level of explanation by a noticeableamount, more than doubling the R2 to .357. Moreover,most of the coefficients for the previous sets of vari-ables are attenuated with the incorporation of theseattitudinal items, implying that they play a part inexplaining how the demographic and registration vari-ables have an effect. The biggest drops actually occurfor age, with the coefficients for the youngest and nextyoungest categories weakening from -.23 to -.10 andfrom -.18 to -.06, respectively, suggesting that lesser

tion circumstances were partly responsible for the group’slesser participation, though, of course, a substantial effectassociated with that age group persists. Interestingly, theconsequences stemming from not receiving a card wouldappear to be just as detrimental for turnout, if not moreso, as being between 18 and 24 years of age.107 The infer-ence, then, is not only that registration matters, but that itmatters a great deal.

This conclusion holds in the face of a third regres-sion model, also shown in Table 4, which adds someavailable attitudinal variables that are typically con-sidered in more comprehensive treatments ofturnout. These include a measure of election interest,two knowledge items (one on party platforms andpolicies, the other on the voting process), one indic-ator of citizen duty and one tapping vote efficacy.108

One rationale for including these items is to considerthem as tapping the propensity of individuals to be

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Table 4Regression Models of Voter Turnout1

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3Baseline: demographic Including registration Including attitudinal

effects status variables

Age18–24 -.31 (.030/.000) -.23 (.030/.000) -.10 (.027/.000)25–34 -.23 (.029/.000) -.18 (.028/.000) -.06 (.025/.011)35–64 -.09 (.025/.002) -.06 (.025/.017) -.01 (.022/.779)

Income< $20,000 -.07 (.026/.005) -.05 (.025/.035) -.01 (.022/.684)$20,000–39,999 -.06 (.021/.006) -.05 (.021/.009) -.01 (.018/.758)$40,000–59,999 .01 (.021/.535) .01 (.020/.674) .02 (.018/.185)

Education< High school -.11 (.029/.000) -.10 (.028/.000) -.03 (.025/.279)High school -.11 (.023/.000) -.11 (.022/.000) -.06 (.020/.003)Some college/university -.06 (.020/.005) -.06 (.019/.003) -.04 (.017/.014)

Aboriginal -.17 (.041/.000) -.14 (.039/.000) -.13 (.035/.000)

Registration statusPersonal information incorrect -.02 (.036/.534) -.03 (.032/.333)Received another’s card -.13 (.050/.012) -.07 (.044/.101)Received no card -.28 (.022/.000) -.18 (.020/.000)Took initiative to get card .08 (.045/.078) .04 (.040/.306)

AttitudesElection interest .07 (.008/.000)Knowledge: parties .04 (.010/.000)Knowledge: voting process .08 (.010/.000)Vote matters .01 (.002/.000)Important to vote .05 (.004/.000)

Constant 1.05 1.05 -.06Adj. R .106 .169 .357N = 2,218

Notes1 Entries are unstandardized regression coefficients. Figures in parentheses are standard errors and statistical significance levels. Source: See table 1.

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to be in more amenable registration (and contact) sit-uations. Since participation disparities already existacross these social categories, in part driven by dif-ferences in interest and information, the registrationsystem served to magnify the traditional discrepan-cies in turnout.

The registration process may also have worked toincrease the inequalities further, even beyond thesesituational aspects. It is possible, indeed plausible,that the new regime’s inhibiting impact on turnoutwas not uniform across socioeconomic categoriesbut, rather, exerted a stronger influence in somecases than in others. Such an “interaction effect” isto be expected for younger and poorer individualsbecause they are less likely to vote to begin with.Generally less motivated and informed than othermembers of society, they are more susceptible to theoperation of contextual effects that make politicalactivity easier or, as in the present case, harder toundertake. Perhaps, as well, this predisposition not tobe engaged politically makes the mobilization effortsof the parties all the more critical for their participa-tion; put differently, not being contacted may repre-sent a larger opportunity cost for the young and theless affluent than for other potential voters. In short,the new registration process may well have had adouble effect: not only did it put young people andpoorer individuals in certain constraining registra-tion situations, it may have risked enhancing theconsequences of that placement.

Table 5 sets out some evidence that suggests thisadditional inhibiting effect did indeed occur in the2000 election. Shown are turnout percentages relatedto registration status, on the one hand, and age andincome, on the other. With the registration categoriesordered from the least to the most amenable situa-tions, the joint effect of registration and each of the

levels of interest, knowledge and the like are inter-vening variables that help interpret the lower votingrate among individuals in these two age groups. Forits part, the coefficient associated with not receivinga card is diminished, from -.28 to -.18 (and from -.13to -.07 for those receiving someone else’s card), indi-cating that the attitudinal variables do have a bearingon the registration-vote relationship. Still, registra-tion status continues to exhibit a direct and reason-ably sizeable effect on turnout. Moreover, the resultspertaining to knowledge of the voting process arealso helpful in supporting the inference that registra-tion is consequential. As a measure of understandingthe administrative side of voting, it has a significantimpact on turnout itself; and even when this is takeninto account, registration status continues to haverelevance. In short, experience with registration isimportant.

The Impact on Participation Inequality110

Not only do these results substantiate the argumentthat the new permanent-list system, in its first fullmanifestation in the 2000 election, had a debilitatingimpact on voter turnout, but they also necessarilymean that the negative effects worked to increaseparticipation inequality. One reason why youngerpeople and the poor were less likely to vote in thatelection was that they found themselves in morechallenging registration circumstances; simply, theywere disproportionately in categories where a greaterdegree of effort was needed in order to participate.Additionally, and as noted earlier, because they wereless likely to be included on the preliminary list or tobe recorded properly at their current address, theywere less likely to be stimulated to vote through thecanvassing efforts of parties and candidates. By com-parison, older and more affluent individuals tended

Table 5Turnout by Registration Status and by Age and Income (percent)1

Age Income

Less than $20,000- $40,000-Registration status 18–24 25–34 35–64 65+ $20,000 39,999 59,999 $60,000+

Received no card 32.0 49.5 69.7 (63.6) 38.6 42.4 65.1 63.8Received another’s card (62.5) 64.0 87.5 (75.0) 64.3 81.2 (57.1) 76.9Personal information incorrect 66.7 85.7 95.8 66.7 61.5 74.3 89.7 95.8Correctly registered 75.3 80.0 90.5 96.3 84.2 83.9 89.7 91.3

Notes1 Figures in parentheses indicate an N of less than 12.Source: See table 1.

the process of change, emphasize some key points andestablish some of the significant linkages among thevarious contributing causes. At another level ofanalysis, this paper set out and defended a perspectivethat privileges the role of Elections Canada and thechief electoral officer as key and proactive elementsthat deserve most of the credit for the advent of aregister. The agency not only took advantage ofopportunities within an evolving context of electoralreform to seize the initiative in advocating on behalfof a register, but it then greatly facilitated its adoptionby employing an effective selling strategy thatstressed the technical and economic feasibility of apermanent list that appealed to the interests of boththe government and the main opposition parties.

One point that was emphasized in the account ofthe changeover was the relatively limited attentionthat had been devoted to considering the possibleconsequences for participation, including participa-tion disparities. The exploration of these areas formedthe basis of the second objective pursued here. Whatgave added weight to this focus, of course, is the anx-iety that has been building about the decline in voterturnout in the country. By and large, the evidenceindicates that the new registration approach has con-tributed to this decline and has accentuated participa-tion gaps across social groups. Evidence of thesenegative effects is strongest and most certain in the2000 election, where the National Register had its firstfull test. Both qualitative and quantitative informationwas marshalled to demonstrate that a large number ofCanadians ended up in less than ideal registration cir-cumstances, which, in turn, served to decrease theirlikelihood of voting. The impact was particularlyheightened for those who did not receive a voterinformation card, a situation that disproportionatelyworked to constrain the voter turnout of younger andpoorer citizens. The results also suggest that the regis-tration process increased participation inequalitybeyond these situational aspects.

These results potentially provide the basis for somerethinking about the change in registration regimes,even for contemplating a return to enumeration inorder to recapture its advantages in facilitating partici-pation. Such a reversal, however, is clearly not in thecards. Even if concerns have been raised by some MPsand in the media about registration in the 2000 elec-tion, such voices have not generated anywhere nearthe momentum necessary to bring about the status quoante. More to the point, the same dominant forces andamenable circumstances that converged to bring about

other variables can be readily seen. In the case of age,the turnout rate is extraordinarily low, at 32 percent,for those between 18 to 24 years of age who did notreceive a card, but soars to 96.3 percent for those 65and over who were correctly registered. As a whole,the essentially nonadditive pattern in the data is hardto miss. The disparity in turnout between being cor-rectly registered and not receiving a card amounts to43.3 percent (75.3 vs. 32 percent) among the young-est group. The gap drops to 30.5 percent among thosebetween 25 and 34 and to 20.8 percent for thosebetween 35 and 64. Interestingly, it actually goesback up to 32.7 percent among those 65 and over; itis unclear whether this is a function of the limitednumber of cases in some of the cells or if it indicatesthat older individuals were also susceptible to theimpact of registration constraints. Still, the mainmessage from the table with respect to age, and to alesser extent income, is that the pattern accords withthe interpretation put forward that the negative regis-tration effects were stronger for the young and thepoor relative to other Canadians.111

Conclusion

T his investigation into the change in Canada’svoter registration regime has been structuredby two objectives. One entailed explaining

why the traditional postwrit enumeration approachwas replaced by a permanent-list system. The signif-icance of the registration method as an integralcomponent of the electoral process, and the need todocument and understand new developments in itscharacter and operation, provided a rationale forpursuing this aim; the fact that the canvassingapproach in particular had been abandoned addedfurther justification. After all, enumeration had beenlong-established in the country, had come to definea uniquely Canadian institution and, moreover,ended up being replaced fairly rapidly even thoughits merits and the overall desirability of keeping thesystem had been officially reaffirmed as late as1986. In broad terms, the task of assembling anexplanation involved identifying the forces and cir-cumstances, political and otherwise, that pushed inthe direction of change. Since most factors workedto support replacing enumeration, in retrospect theoutcome was predictable; the subject was nonethe-less seen as worthy of study — in order to describe

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the November 2000 election. Such curiosity sur-rounds the second question as well. It was designedto probe which of two principles, economics or par-ticipation, should inform the registration approach:

What do you think is more important, that thevoters list be prepared as inexpensively as possi-ble or that every effort is made to include every-one, even if it costs significantly more, or do younot have an opinion on this?

Here, too, a substantial number of respondents, infact, 30.6 percent, responded that they had no opin-ion, suggesting a lack of engagement with the issue,though some of these individuals might have had dif-ficulty choosing strictly between the two ideals.Those who did voice a preference were divided aboutthe principle that should prevail but, interestingly,more thought that inclusion (39.6 percent) as opposedto costs (29.7 percent) should be the defining princi-ple guiding the registration process. Rather thanmake too much of this 10-point difference, perhaps itsuffices to note simply that this result at least sug-gests that Elections Canada will need to do more tomeet the desire of many Canadians for greater equali-ty in electoral participation.

Among the factors inhibiting a return to the oldregistration regime, Elections Canada’s unwaveringenthusiasm for “its” register probably ranks at thetop. At the same time, the agency has not been indif-ferent to the kinds of concerns voiced in some cir-cles. Indeed, it cannot be. Obviously, it must providesome kind of response, at the very least, to MPs whohave spoken out and continue to express reserva-tions about the register’s debilitating effects on par-ticipation. More importantly, the agency can beexpected to take its job seriously and improve theeffectiveness of the National Register, and thatincludes maximizing coverage and accuracy.Ironically enough, with the register firmly in place,the agency can perhaps now afford to pay moreattention to participation-linked matters that origi-nally were given little regard.

The chief electoral officer’s appearance before theStanding Committee on Procedure and House Affairson May 7, 2002, provided him an opportunity to dis-cuss the kinds of steps that Elections Canada hadrecently taken or was contemplating to improve theoperation of the register. To begin with, Kingsleypointed out that an agreement had been reached withthe Canada Customs and Revenue Agency to alter taxforms in order to allow individuals who give theirpermission and confirm their Canadian citizenship tobe added directly to the National Register. This option

the register in the first instance still prevail. Claimsabout costs and federal-provincial co-operation, theattraction of incumbency advantage and the ongoingcommitment to technological change, among otherfactors, continue to characterize the discourse on themerits of the new regime. Moreover, with the pas-sage of time, the investment and commitment, mate-rial and otherwise, that have gone into producingand maintaining the National Register haveentrenched it as a central element in the electoralprocess. The other political reality that mitigatesagainst the possibility of switching back to enumera-tion is the simple fact that those most affected by theinhibiting effects of the register have the least politi-cal clout. The fact that the debate on registration, tothe extent that there has been a debate, has beenconfined to elite circles and has not at all penetratedpublic consciousness has also served to solidify thepermanent-list approach.

Interestingly, there is some evidence suggestingthat a wider debate, had it occurred, might have ledto at least some reservations about a new regime.Two questions on voter registration were posed aspart of a national public opinion survey sponsored bythe Institute for Research on Public Policy and carriedout in the first half of 2000.112 The second question ismore pertinent but it may be useful to note the firstone as well; it asked:

In the past, the voters list was prepared by hav-ing enumerators go door-to-door before everyelection. In order to save money, we now use alist that is updated regularly using governmentrecords like income tax forms. Do you think weshould go back to using the door-to-door list, orcontinue to use the government list, or do younot have an opinion on this?

Slightly more than one in two respondents (56.7percent) indicated a preference for continuing withthe list, while only 19.3 percent suggested a returnto enumeration. At the same time, it is unclear howmuch can be read into these responses as anendorsement of the register. Considering that practi-cal experience with a permanent list would notcome until the election later that year, it is likelythat much of this opinion was “soft”; some peopleindicating a preference for the new system mighthave responded unreflectively, being more swayedby the cost-savings reference in the question thananything else. The fact that nearly a quarter of therespondents (23.9 percent) offered no opinion alsosuggests uncertainty or tentativeness. One wonderswhat the distribution might have looked like hadthis question been put to a similar sample just after

using the telephone to register in a new constituency,would be helpful to individuals with enough interestand initiative to take advantage of them. It is unclearhow much the easier option will serve those who lackthat interest and initiative. And, as well, not all youngpeople file an income tax return, which is also true ofmany poorer Canadians. The effectiveness of identify-ing areas of undercoverage, especially in low-incomelocales, would be important but, of course, matters willdepend on the thoroughness of the subsequent actiontaken. Presumably, the intention is to take proactivemeasures along the lines of targeted revision, which, itwill be recalled, entails limited but focused enumera-tion-like actions carried out during the election period.

What is interesting to note in this regard is that thechief electoral officer’s last recommendation quotedabove would provide the basis for canvassing meas-ures between election events as well as during revi-sion. Presumably, it would even allow for thepossibility of a complete enumeration in off-electionyears, which would bring the Canadian approach morein line with the Australian model, whereby biennialdoor-to-door canvassing is used to update the voterregister. Closer to home, British Columbia has manda-tory enumeration during the third calendar year fol-lowing an election, and the five other provinces thatrecently adopted their own registers officially allow forenumeration as well. In the absence of any possibilityof turning back the clock, the incorporation of enu-meration-like activities in order to balance the regis-tration approach would appear to be the best way toaddress the coverage inadequacies that seem almostinherent in the current system.115 Planned and unhur-ried periodic nationwide canvassing outside of electionperiods, in conjunction with a substantially expandeduse of targeted revision during the election period,would serve to add hundreds of thousands ofCanadians to the voters list. Such state-promoted ini-tiatives would have the additional benefit of establish-ing direct contact with eligible voters, constituting, toquote Courtney and Smith again, “a personal reminderby the community of the positive value that it placeson electoral participation by its citizens.”116

The supplementary use of enumeration measureswould naturally add to the cost of registering voters.But this is the trade-off that must accompany anykind of serious commitment to facilitating participa-tion. For the longest time, ensuring unfettered accessto the vote was the dominant principle governing theemployment of the registration method in Canada.This commitment to access wound up receiving rela-

was actually put in place in time for the spring 2002tax period. While it applies to all eligible voters, theexpectation is that it will register mainly young peo-ple, especially new 18-year-olds. According toElections Canada, of the 275,000 people expected tobe added to the voters lists through this ticking ofboxes, some 225,000 will be young people. Otherendeavours have entailed devising communicationsstrategies to make more effective contact with youngpeople in order to encourage their registration. Planswere also afoot, Kingsley indicated, to research cov-erage, and undercoverage, of key demographicgroups such as low-income individuals, using thenewly available 2001 census data.

Kingsley also indicated that a review of “addressand geography components of the registry” had beenlaunched by returning officers “to ensure that streetand place names are spelled correctly in those fewplaces where there are still problems and that electorsare in the correct electoral district and polling divi-sion.”113 And testing was apparently continuing withregard to the tracking of address changes usingCanada Post information and in connection with on-line registration.

The chief electoral officer used his appearancebefore the Standing Committee to remind MPs ofproposals (requiring legislative changes) that he hadset out earlier, in the context of his recommenda-tions following the 2000 general election.114 Onemodification recommended in his report, Moderni-zing the Electoral Process, was to make it easier forvoters who move from one constituency to anotherto phone in their corrections, an option that is cur-rently limited to those who move within a con-stituency (p. 19). (At the same time, enhancednetworking among computers would allow officialsto remove a listing at a person’s former address, thusreducing duplicate listings.) A more general recom-mendation would make it easier for individuals whotake the initiative to register (outside of the electionperiod) by eliminating the need for them to sign acertificate of eligibility (pp. 13–15). Another propo-sal, if implemented, would enhance the ability of thechief electoral officer “to undertake initiatives toverify, correct and update the Register and to author-ize returning officers and others, to conduct suchinitiatives outside of the electoral events” (p. 16).

No doubt, these measures have the potential tomake some difference, though the nature and magni-tude of the effects are an open question at this junc-ture. Some new measures, such as the option of

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tively little consideration during the process thatculminated in the establishment of the NationalRegister. With very little systematic thought givento what might be lost in terms of participation, thefinancial savings were accorded more weight thanwas warranted. It now appears that the time is rightto revisit the matter, and to ensure that the discus-sion and the policy choices reflect the ideal thatregistration regimes should primarily operate touphold the key democratic principle of facilitatingthe participation of all citizens.

tate or inhibit voter turnout is well established in the liter-ature; see, for instance, Robert W. Jackman, “PoliticalInstitutions and Voter Turnout in Industrial Democracies,”American Political Science Review 81, no. 4 (December1987), pp. 405-423; and Robert W. Jackman and Ross A.Miller, “Voter Turnout in the Industrial Democracies Duringthe 1980s,” Comparative Political Studies 27, no. 4(January 1995), pp. 467-492.

4 Courtney and Smith, “Registering Voters,” for instance,report a coverage figure of 95.99 percent for the 1988election; the estimate was generated by Elections Canadafor the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and PartyFinancing (p. 451, footnote 4). They also reference cover-age estimates of 97 percent and 95 percent for otherperiods (p. 421).

5 For a strong statement on how participation inequalitytranslates into unequal political representation and influ-ence, see Arend Lijphart, “Unequal Participation:Democracy’s Unresolved Dilemma,” American PoliticalScience Review 91, no. 1 (March 1997), pp. 1-14.

6 “No other country has a system where the lists of votersare prepared afresh, on a systematic basis, and so closeto the time of voting, as does Canada” (Boyer, ElectionLaw in Canada, p. 425).

7 Boyer, Election Law in Canada, p. 426. He does notexplicitly indicate any source for the 98-percent figure;it may originate in a study of 12 by-elections in 1978that Courtney and Smith (“Registering Voters”) cite intheir own work, though they note that the figure (98.1percent) refers to the percentage of the names on thevoters’ list who were eligible (and thus is more a measureof accuracy than of coverage) (p. 364).

8 Norman Ward, The Canadian House of Commons:Representation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1950),p. 204 (cited on p. 416 in Boyer, Election Law in Canada).

9 Terrence H. Qualter, The Election Process in Canada(Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1970), p. 22.

10 See, in particular, Kenneth R. Carty, “Citizens, Electors,Voters and Parties in Canada or The Case of the MissingVoters List,” in Courtney, “Registering Voters” (pp. 41–48).

11 White Paper on Election Law Reform (Ottawa: Queen’sPrivy Council for Canada, 1986). For a mention of earlierofficial pronouncements, see Black, “The NationalRegister of Electors,” pp. 8-9.

12 White Paper on Election Law Reform, p. 39.13 An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act, the

Parliament of Canada Act and the Referendum Act.14 More exactly, the last enumeration was conducted

between April 10 and 16 in all parts of Canada exceptAlberta and PEI, where agreements had been reached touse the lists produced from their most recent provincialelections (March 1997 and November 1996, respectively).

15 Bill C-63 also altered the hours of voting in federal elec-tions across the country, in order to ensure that the elec-tion results would be made public at approximately thesame time.

16 Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada on the37th General Election (Ottawa: Chief Electoral Officer ofCanada, 2001), p. 58.

NotesThis paper benefited greatly from the enormous assistanceprovided by Elections Canada. Many important facets ofthe analysis, including those that critically examine theagency’s role in the development of the National Registerof Electors and the permanent list’s impact on turnout,would not have been possible without Elections Canada’sactive co-operation; this included the provision of in-housedocuments, statistical information and survey material aswell as discussions with key personnel. This paper also ben-efited from the reflections and suggestions of André Blais,Paul Howe, Richard Johnston and an anonymous referee,and from the research assistance of Chris Anderson.1 For a brief discussion (with references) of the different

objectives and principles associated with alternativeregistration regimes, see Jerome H. Black, “TheNational Register of Electors: Raising Questions Aboutthe New Approach to Voter Registration in Canada,”Policy Matters 1, no. 10 (December 2000).

2 Histories of voter registration at the federal level inCanada are provided by Norman Ward, The CanadianHouse of Commons, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1963), ch. 10; J. Patrick Boyer, ElectionLaw in Canada: The Law and Procedure of Federal,Provincial and Territorial Elections, Vol. 1 (Toronto:Butterworths, 1987), pp. 416-424; and John C.Courtney and David E. Smith, ”Registering Voters:Canada in a Comparative Context,” in Michael Cassidy(ed.), Democratic Rights and Electoral Reform inCanada (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1991), pp. 346-358.Provincial and territorial variations are also consideredby Boyer, Election Law in Canada, pp. 424-425, 452-527; and Courtney and Smith, ”Registering Voters,” pp.372-389. A fairly up-to-date listing of the legal provi-sions governing voter registration at both levels ofgovernment is set out in Elections Canada’sCompendium of Election Administration in Canada: AComparative Overview (Ottawa: Elections Canada,2002), part D.

3 One key generalization that can be made about registra-tion systems is that their impact on accessibility for vot-ers very much depends upon whether voters need to takethe initiative in order to be registered. See, for instance,Valentine Herman and Françoise Mendel, Parliaments ofthe World: A Compendium (London: Macmillan, 1976),p. 40; and William C. Kimberling, “A Rational Approachto Evaluating Alternative Voter Registration Systems andProcedures,” in John C. Courtney (ed.), RegisteringVoters: Comparative Perspectives. Report of a RoundTable on Voter Registration (Cambridge, MA: Center forInternational Affairs, Harvard University, 1991), pp. 3-11.Illustrative of this fact is the notoriously low registrationnumbers in most American states, where individualsmust assume the major responsibility for registering; seeG. Bingham Powell, Jr., “American Voter Turnout inComparative Perspective,” American Political ScienceReview 80, no. 1 (March 1986), pp. 17-43. The broaderargument and demonstration of how the prevailing insti-tutional features and procedures can alternatively facili-

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34 Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada on the35th General Election (Ottawa: Chief Electoral Officerof Canada, 1994), p. 25.

35 The 1992 Federal Referendum: A Challenge Met: Reportof the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada (Ottawa: ChiefElectoral Officer of Canada, 1994), p. 19.

36 Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada on the35th General Election, ch. 13.

37 The interview took place on August 22, 2000, at ElectionsCanada’s headquarters, and lasted about two hours.

38 Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs,April 30, 1996. He responded by noting that ElectionsCanada has “been champing at the bit for this oppor-tunity.” See p. 1, at http:/www.parl.gc.ca/committees35…nce/10_96-04-30/haff10_blk101html,

39 House of Commons Debates, October 22, 1996, p. 2, athttp://www.parl.gc.ca/english/hansard//088_96-10-22/088GO1E.html

40 See, for example, Report of the Chief Electoral Officerof Canada on the 36th General Election (Ottawa: ChiefElectoral Officer of Canada, 1997), p. 73.

41 It might be argued that this new orientation representsa natural and inevitable development in an agencypreoccupied with operational imperatives and that theincreasing emphasis on technology would haveoccurred even without the influence of the auditor-general’s report. One also wonders if the attractivenessof a permanent list for Elections Canada, and forKingsley personally, reflected a penchant for innova-tion within the new environment of commitment totechnology — almost as an end in itself. Graham Whiteoffered this interpretation in his critique of the registerat an IRPP-sponsored conference, “Transparency,Disclosure and Democracy: Assessing the ChiefElectoral Officer’s Recommendations,” held February27, 2002, in Ottawa.

42 Elections Canada, “Discussion Paper,” p. 1; the com-mittee was formally known as the Steering Committee— Continuous Register of Voters.

43 Elections Canada, “Discussion Paper,” p. 1, originalemphasis.

44 The executive summary, for instance, lists the “com-pelling reasons” for considering the establishment of aregister. They are (in the order listed): growing prob-lems with the way enumeration works, the possibilityof savings from shared lists across jurisdictions, theadvantage of reduced election periods, the acceptanceby Canadians of technology to provide services, theuse of registers in other countries and the register as afundamental building block leading to electronic vot-ing. Elections Canada, “Discussion Paper” (p. i).

45 The report that the project team ultimately produced —The Register of Electors Project: A Report on Researchand Feasibility — indicated the establishment date as inlate 1994 (Ottawa: Register of Electors Project Team,submitted to Jean-Pierre Kingsley, Elections Canada,March 1996, p. 10). However, January 1995 is the datereferenced in the Report of the Chief Electoral Officerof Canada on the 36th General Election, p. 11.

17 On terminology, Courtney rightly points out that the term“permanent voters list” is inaccurate since there arealways changes to be incorporated into the register(whatever its form), which is why he prefers “continuous-ly maintained roll.” John C. Courtney, “ReformingRepresentational Building Blocks: Canada at theBeginning of the Twenty-First Century,” in William Cross(ed.), Political Parties, Representation, and ElectoralDemocracy in Canada (Don Mills, ON: Oxford UniversityPress, 2002), pp. 115-131, esp. p. 119. This paper uses theformer term because its usage is more widespread.

18 Courtney, “Reforming Representational BuildingBlocks.”

19 Those provinces were Alberta, New Brunswick,Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario and Quebec. Nodoubt, provincial developments (not explained here)were in some cases linked to the initiative taken at thefederal level; this is a topic that merits investigation inits own right.

20 Black, “The National Register of Electors.”21 Black, “The National Register of Electors.”22 In a sense, the 1980 election constituted an earlier

precedent since its proximity to the 1979 election ledto a decision by Elections Canada not to carry outanother enumeration. Still, the context was entirelydifferent, with no thought at all being given to theidea of a permanent list. In fact, Courtney and Smithargue that the enumeration process at the time, whichincluded a heavy reliance on revision, “proved that itis capable of responding fairly to instances of unantic-ipated crises” (“Registering Voters,” p. 355).

23 Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and PartyFinancing [hereafter, RCERPF], Reforming ElectoralDemocracy: Final Report (Ottawa: Royal Commissionon Electoral Reform and Party Financing, 1991).

24 Courtney, “Reforming Representational BuildingBlocks.”

25 Courtney, “Reforming Representational BuildingBlocks,” p. 125.

26 Courtney, “Reforming Representational Building Blocks.” 27 See, for instance, Courtney and Smith, “Registering

Voters,” p. 358.28 1989 Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada

(Ottawa: Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, 1989).29 1989 Report of the Auditor General of Canada, esp.

pp. 8–10, 20, at http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/domino/reports.nsf/html/8910ce.html

30 RCERPF, Reforming Electoral Democracy, Vol. 2, ch. 4.31 “Closed list” approaches, such as the one employed in

Britain, have a closing date that typically makes it dif-ficult for individuals to be registered until a new list isprepared. See, for example, Qualter, The ElectionProcess in Canada, pp. 18–22.

32 At the same time, of course, receiving these lists earlierwould be of lesser value if they contained many omis-sions and inaccuracies.

33 Elections Canada, “Discussion Paper on a ContinuousRegister of Electors” (Ottawa: Elections Canada, April1994), p. ii.

went up to 83 percent when respondents were told (nearthe end of the interview) that the list would save $30 mil-lion for each election, and more should the list be shared.These numbers are likely inflated, in no small measurebecause Elections Canada was identified as the sponsor. Aslanting effect seems particularly likely given thatCanadians would have had little information about perma-nent lists and, in the absence of public debate, would havereflected little on registration systems. Indeed, it is tellingthat only 3 percent of respondents had no opinion on thisquestion, an unrealistically small percentage for such alow-information policy area. (In contrast, two questions onvoter registration in a 2000 survey sponsored by theInstitute for Research on Public Policy explicitly allowedfor “don’t know” responses and found “no opinion” levelsto be roughly 24 and 30 percent; these results are brieflydiscussed in the conclusion to the current paper).

49 The Register of Electors Project, p. 11.50 For instance, at one point Gray praised the legislation

during third reading by noting, “The register project alsosupports the goal of improved federal-provincial co-operation and the reduction of overlap and duplication.”House of Commons Debates, November 26, 1996 – see p.8 at http://www.parl.gc.ca/english/hansard//107_96-04-26/107eGO1E.html

51 In fact, in 1998 the Elections Canada project team thatdeveloped the register won the Award for Leadership inService Innovation presented by the Association ofProfessional Executives of the Public Service of Canadaand sponsored by Deloitte Consulting. A publication bythe latter, Elections Canada: National Register ofElectors, states that the register “eliminates the need fortime consuming and expensive door-to-door enumera-tion” (Ottawa: Deloitte Consulting, no date), p. 1.

52 See also Courtney, “Reforming Representational BuildingBlocks,” p. 125.

53 There is some Canadian literature demonstrating thatincumbents do have an electoral advantage. See, forexample, M. Krashinky and W. Milne, “The Effect ofIncumbency in the 1984 and 1985 Ontario Elections,”Canadian Journal of Political Science 19, no. 2 (June1986), pp. 337-343, and by the same authors, “SomeEvidence on the Effects of Incumbency in the 1988Canadian Federal Election,” in Leslie Seidle (ed.), Issuesin Party and Election Finance in Canada (Toronto:Dundurn Press, 1991). See also David Docherty, Mr.Smith Goes to Ottawa: Life in the House of Commons(Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997).

54 Several years later, following the 2000 election, one memberof the Standing Committee, Carolyn Parrish, was quite candidin drawing the link: “You see, a short electoral period is reallygreat for the incumbents because it puts everybody else at adisadvantage. We’ve been advertising for three and a halfyears, so we’re in good shape.” Standing Committee onProcedure and House Affairs, March 1, 2001, p. 13, athttp://www.parl.gc.ca/ InfoComDoc/37/1/HAFF/Meetings/Evidence/haffev06-e.htm

55 The Reform Party’s Stephen Harper complained about therush to put the new system in place: “We are very con-

46 The Register of Electors Project, p. 10.47 The savings estimate that Elections Canada would

eventually use in public, as it made the “business case”for changing registration regimes, was $30 million. Tobe clear, this is the amount that would be saved foreach general election or referendum held subsequentto the recouping of costs associated with building andmaintaining the register. Of this amount, $8 million isconnected to the shortened election campaign. A criti-cal analysis of the financial dimension of thechangeover, a subject that clearly merits attention, isbeyond the scope of this study.

48 The following portrayal is essentially concerned withelite-level politics and accords virtually no role tomass opinion. Thus, it is in fundamental agreementwith Courtney’s characterization of “indifference onthe part of the public” (“Reforming RepresentationalBuilding Blocks,” p. 125). That said, during the legisla-tive process Elections Canada did state, on at least twooccasions, that its surveys indicated public support fora register, first in front of the Standing Committee onProcedure and House Affairs, April 30, 1996 (see p. 3at http:/www.parl.gc.ca/committees35…nce/10_96-04-30/haff10_blk101html) and then during third readingof the bill, November 26, 1996 (see p. 8 at http://www.parl.gc.ca/english/hansard//107_96-04-26/107eGO1E.html). The Report of the Chief ElectoralOfficer of Canada on the 36th General Election alsomakes reference to supportive public opinion surveys(p. 12). Even if the survey results were not central tothe pitch for the register, it is still unclear to whatextent they could be construed as indicating strongpublic support. This is the case with regard to the sum-maries of two national surveys that Elections Canadamade available to the author. The first, carried out byAngus Reid in July 1996, was limited to opinionsabout the sources that might be used to update a per-manent list, and thus contained no evaluative ques-tions about alternative registration systems or theprinciples they should embody. Moreover, proregistersentiment was no doubt accentuated, given the word-ing used in the survey’s preface: “In order to eliminateduplication and reduce costs, consideration is beinggiven to a process to replace federal enumeration.” Thesecond survey, carried out the following month byEnvironics, did not probe underlying principles, butdid include general preference questions. One of thefirst questions was (unprefaced):

Elections Canada, which is the nonpartisan agencyresponsible for organizing and conducting federalelections, has proposed that Canada develop a reg-ister of electors, sometimes called a permanentvoters’ list, that would be updated regularly andwould replace door-to-door enumeration at eachelection. Generally speaking, do you stronglyapprove, somewhat approve, somewhat disapproveor strongly disapprove of this idea?

Approval was overwhelming, with 76 percent signallingsupport, 38 percent strongly so. Furthermore, support

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pation and inequality. At one point she said thatElections Canada’s approach “sounds a little bit like aversion of negative option billing — the voter to take apositive measure to ensure he or she gets on the vot-ers’ list. This makes them different from somebody elsewho is put on the list as a result of the enumeration.”She also worried that those who are illiterate, blind orspeak another language would not be picked up in theupdating process, which she suggested amounted to a“middle-class approach to publicity.” StandingCommittee on Procedure and House Affairs, October30, 1996, pp. 13, 15, at http://www.parl.gc.ca/commit-tees35…nce/27_96-10-30/haff27_blk101.html.Caterall’s continuing preoccupation with inclusion andfairness is evident in her exchanges with Kingsley dur-ing a Committee session held on November, 21, 2002 –see pp. 55–56, at http://www.parl.gc.ca/InfoComDoc/37/2/HAFF/Meetings/Evidence/HAFFEV07-E.HTM

64 Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada on the37th General Election, p. 59.

65 See Jerome H. Black, “Reforming the Context of VotingProcess in Canada: Lessons From Other Democracies,”in Herman Bakvis (ed.), Voter Turnout in Canada(Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1991), pp. 61–176. See alsoRichard Johnston, “Canadian Elections at theMillennium,” Choices 6, no. 6 (September 2000), p. 13.

66 See, for example, Centre for Research and Information onCanada [CRIC], “Voter Participation in Canada: IsCanadian Democracy in Crisis?” CRIC Papers, October2001.

67 Jean-Pierre Kingsley, quoted in “Liberals Ignore Windsof Change…While It’s Familiar Shores for Chrétien,”Toronto Star, December 30, 2000.

68 See, for example, André Blais, Elisabeth Gidengil,Richard Nadeau and Neil Nevitte, Anatomy of a LiberalVictory: Making Sense of the Vote in the 2000Canadian Election (Peterborough, ON: BroadviewPress, 2002), esp. ch. 3; and Jon H. Pammett, “ThePeople’s Verdict,” in Jon H. Pammett and ChristopherDornan (eds.), The Canadian General Election of 2000(Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2001), pp. 293–317.

69 Blais et al., Anatomy of a Liberal Victory, ch. 3;Brenda O’Neill, “Generational Patterns in the PoliticalOpinions and Behaviour of Canadians: Separating theWheat from the Chaff,” Policy Matters 2, no. 5(October 2001).

70 See the comments by Louis Massicotte, as quoted inCRIC, “Voter Participation in Canada,” p. 13.

71 For instance, André Blais found that turnout dropped by3 percent, on average, in the 1990s among the 91 coun-tries he examined. See To Vote or Not to Vote: TheMerits and Limits of Rational Choice Theory (Pittsburgh:University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001), pp. 33–36. Seealso Mark Gray and Miki Caul, “Declining Voter Turnoutin Advanced Industrial Democracies, 1950 to 1997,”Comparative Political Studies 33, no. 9 (November2000), pp. 1091–1122. While there is a consensus thatturnout has been declining, there is some debate as toits extensiveness, its timing across democracies and the

cerned about this. I cannot understate this. We arealready playing a guessing game here in the opposi-tion about the timing of the next election, and wedon’t want to play a guessing game about the lengthas well.” Standing Committee on Procedure and HouseAffairs, October 30, 1996, p. 8, at http://www.parl.gc.ca/committees35…nce/27_96-10-30/haff27_blk101.html

56 Opposition (Conservative) senators were more explicit invocalizing their views about an advantage. SenatorMurray said, “The government is in a hurry. I do notreproach it for that. I suppose that I, too, would be in ahurry if I enjoyed the lead in the public opinion pollswhich the government enjoys today.” Senate Debates,December 3, 1996, p. 20, at http://www.parl.gc.ca/eng-lish/senate/deb-e/56db-e.html. His colleague, DavidTkachuk, even wondered about the naïveté of the oppo-sition in the House for not immediately recognizing thepartisan nature of the matter: “Why is there such arush? It is only for the purposes of having a 36-daycampaign in the election. I guarantee you, honourablesenators, that if the Liberals were at 30 per cent in thepolls, we would not be rushing this through. As a matterof fact, the bill would not be here. It took a few days forthe opposition in the other place to figure this out. Icannot believe that it took them so long, but we havebeen fighting the Liberals for a long time. We knowthem.” Senate Debates, December 5, 1996, p. 12, athttp://www.parl.gc.ca/english/senate/ deb-e/58db-e.html

57 The Reform Party was also against the staggered-hoursprovision that had been added to the bill late in theprocess.

58 In fact, some of the lengthiest discussions in the com-mittee and in the House centred on privacy issues, par-ticularly whether to include information on genderand date of birth, and on application of the 36-daycampaign to by-elections — opposition parties fearedthat a snap call followed by a short election periodwould give them inadequate time to mount an effec-tive campaign. (In the compromise solution, genderand date of birth are included in the register but not inthe information made available to candidates or par-ties; in the case of by-elections, a minimum of 11 daysis required between notification of a vacancy and issu-ing of the writs.) The implementation of staggeredhours was also a topic of debate.

59 Liberal Party of Canada, Creating Opportunity: TheLiberal Plan for Canada (Ottawa: Liberal Party ofCanada, 1993).

60 Courtney and Smith, “Registering Voters.”61 Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on Legal

and Constitutional Affairs, December 10, 1996, p. 2, athttp://www.parl.gc.ca/english/senate/com-e/lega-e/42ev-e.htm

62 See The Register of Electors Project, pp. 11–12.63 Liberal MP Marlene Caterall, a member of the Standing

Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, can besingled out for her exceptional and consistent voicingof concerns about the impact of the register on partici-

84 Report of the Chief Electoral Officer on the 35th GeneralElection, p. 96.

85 Perhaps Elections Canada was able to take advantage ofthe focus on Quebec and concentrate its efforts andresources there.

86 Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada on the37th General Election, p. 62.

87 Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada on the37th General Election, p. 62.

88 Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs,March 1, 2001, p. 21.

89 The report’s “main objectives were to evaluate the levelsof satisfaction among electors and stakeholders and toidentify areas that could be improved.” Elections CanadaResearch Studies, “2000 General Election Post-eventOverview” (no date), p. 1, at http://www.elections.ca/ loi/rec/overview_e.pdf

90 Representatives included national directors, agents andmembers of Elections Canada’s Advisory Committee ofPolitical Parties.

91 Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, March1, 2001, p. 13, at http://www.parl.gc.ca/ InfoComDoc/37/1/HAFF/Meetings/Evidence/haffev06-e.htm

92 Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs,March 1, 2001, p. 10.

93 Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs,March 1, 2001, p. 16.

94 Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs,March 1, 2001, pp. 20–21.

95 Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, March1, 2001, p. 13. Incidentally, Parrish’s negative allusion tothe federal register in the Ontario context stems from theprovince’s decision to use it to generate the preliminary listof voters for the June 1999 election (and as the first step inestablishing its own permanent list). Critics complained thatthe information obtained from the register was out of dateand that the revision process was too limited and poorlyorganized. It was argued that all of this, in conjunction witha shortened election campaign (from 37 to 28 days),depressed turnout, especially among the less establishedand the poor. In turn, this had partisan implications, givingthe incumbent Conservatives the advantage. For commentsand references on the Ontario case, see Black, “The NationalRegister of Electors,” pp. 16, 20–21 and footnote 45.

96 Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs,March 1, 2001, p. 13.

97 Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs,March 1, 2001, p. 3.

98 See, for instance, Andrew Duffy, “Youth Tuning Out:Election Boss,” The Gazette (Montreal), October 30, 2000.

99 The situation for new citizens appears to be better,though not perfect: Elections Canada reports thatbetween 85 to 90 percent of new Canadian citizens agreeto be added to the Register. Standing Committee onProcedure and House Affairs, May 7, 2002, p. 30, athttp://www.parl.gc.ca/InfoComDoc/37/1/HAFF/Meetings/Evidence/haffev63_e.htm

100 Elections Canada kindly provided the author with thisdata set. According to its information, “Ipsos-Reid con-

uniqueness of the Canadian case. See, for example,Johnston, “Canadian Elections at the Millennium,” pp.14–15; and the references in CRIC, “Voter Participationin Canada,” p. 6.

72 Were it not for the exceptional political developmentsin Quebec in 1993, particularly the rise of the BlocQuébécois as it mobilized the federal participation ofnationalists, useful comparisons of turnout levelsmight have been made between the enumerationapproach employed in the province and the (reused)list approach employed elsewhere.

73 Blais et al., Anatomy of a Liberal Victory, p. 57. Forsome earlier evidence of the effects of contacting onturnout (and vote direction), see Jerome H. Black“Revisiting the Effects of Canvassing on VotingBehaviour,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 17(1984), pp. 351–374.

74 Candidates would, of course, still get the revised andofficial voters lists, but their usefulness would be limit-ed by the fact that they are received late in the cam-paign, the former 10 days before election day and thelatter three days in advance.

75 And, of course, there are other explanatory variablesthat would need to be taken into account.

76 Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada on the37th General Election, p. 90.

77 André Blais, Antoine Bilodeau and Christopher Kam, “TheFlow of the Vote Between the 1993 and 1997 Elections”(unpublished manuscript, no date). The slightly higherfigure in this study may be due to the authors’ takingemigration into account in their re-adjustments.

78 Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada on the37th General Election, p. 90.

79 Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada on the37th General Election, p. 90.

80 For the 1988 election, the coverage figure of 95.99percent cited by Courtney and Smith in “RegisteringVoters” is used (see footnote 4 in the current docu-ment). Estimates of the age-eligible population arebased on various Statistics Canada sources and theIDEA Web site, at http://www.idea.int/voter_turnout/northamerica/canada.html. Citizenship estimates wereprovided by Elections Canada, which had originallyobtained them from Statistics Canada.

81 Citizenship estimates for election years, in particular,must be extrapolated from census data.

82 Elections Canada has published its own coverage esti-mates for these five elections — 95.5, 95.2, 95.9, 95.1 and95.2 percent, respectively, indicating little temporal varia-tion and no particular pattern. These figures are higherthan those generated in this paper. According to oneagency official, this is because of the use of unadjustedpopulation counts, which are several percentage pointsbelow the corrected figures that Statistics Canada empha-sizes. Still, assuming that the undercounting is consistent,it is unclear why the estimates provided by ElectionsCanada differ from the pattern shown in figure 1.

83 Report of the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada on the36th General Election.

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when to vote and knowing what other options were inplace if you could not get out to vote on election day”).Still, the way these variables behaved (their impact onturnout and their correlations with other variables) sug-gests their relevance for present purposes and that theyhave not produced misleading results. Finally, both theitem on citizen duty (“It is important that people votein elections”) and the item on efficacy (“My vote reallydoesn’t matter”) are based on a 0–10-scale, agree-dis-agree format (appropriately recoded).

109 At the same time, it might be argued that registrationexperiences themselves have a bearing on politicalattitudes, including the possibility that individuals willbecome more interested as a result of political contactduring the campaign.

110 The impact of the new registration system on participa-tion inequality is not necessarily limited to differencesin age, income and the like. A geographical dimensionmay also be relevant. The degree of coverage and accu-racy achieved by the register might be expected to varyfrom one constituency to another, in part as a functionof population mobility; presumably, this would be mostevident in differences between urban (especially citycentre) and rural ridings. Interprovincial disparities mayalso be evident, due in part to differences in the sharingand updating arrangements established with theprovinces and territories. These aspects (not exploredhere) require a careful analysis that should also includea comparative assessment of the performance of enu-meration vis-à-vis geographical disparities in coverage.Elections Canada does maintain the raw data necessaryfor setting up the dependent variables for such ananalysis in the case of the register (i.e., coverage andaccuracy estimates broken down by jurisdiction andconstituency).

111 A multivariate version of this analysis (which includedall of the variables indicated in the third regressionmodel shown in table 4) provides some additional sup-port for the presence of interaction effects. Focusingon the most consequential registration situation, notreceiving a voter information card, interaction termswere created by multiplying the dummy variable forthis registration experience by each of those represent-ing the two lowest categories for the age, income andeducation series of variables and then examining theimpact of these “product terms” alongside the original(or “main effect”) variables. Three significant interac-tion effects, all in the expected direction, wereobserved. One was for the lowest age group, with acoefficient of -.08 (p = .096) alongside main effects forage, -.07 (p = .012) and not receiving a card, -.09 (p =.012), meaning that not receiving a card accentuatednonvoting by eight points for those between the agesof 18 and 24. The two others were for the income vari-ables with a coefficient of -.13 (p = .012) for thosenonrecipients with an income of less than $20,000 andof -.08 (p = .087) for those in the second lowestincome bracket ($20,000–$39,999); interestingly, thecoefficients for the income variables as main effects

ducted a random telephone survey of Canadians thattook place between November 28 and December 11,2000. A total of 2,500 Canadians were surveyed.”While the survey oversampled individuals between theages of 18 and 34, the weighted version is used here. Itis “representative of Canada’s age and gender composi-tion in accordance with 1996 Census data.”

101 Not shown are 14 “don’t know” cases, representing .5percent of all respondents.

102 For those who were already registered, some correc-tions could have been made by telephone (e.g., addresschanges within the constituency), while others, partic-ularly those involving a move to a new constituency,would have entailed a personal visit to the headquar-ters of the returning officer for completion of forms.Those who were not registered would have needed toapply in person to the returning officer (or, if they reg-istered on election day, to other officials).

103 Blais et al., in their survey of the 2000 election,Anatomy of a Liberal Victory, report a similar patternwith respect to age and not receiving a voter informa-tion card (see p. 60). In yet another survey, Pammettreports that young people, as well as lower income andlower educated citizens, “were more likely to reportproblems with being registered on the voters list” (“ThePeople’s Verdict,” p. 312).

104 At the same time, students were among those most likelyto take the initiative to resolve their registration situation— 9.6 percent, compared to 3 percent for the sample as awhole – reinforcing the inference that the category com-prised exceptionally motivated young people.

105 These figures exclude those who took the initiative andthose who replied “don’t know.”

106 The logistic-based results are not shown but are avail-able from the author upon request. An exceptionwhere the OLS and logistic results are not similar ispointed out below in footnote 111.

107 An examination of the betas, standardized regressioncoefficients, which are more suitable for across-vari-able assessments, reveals a coefficient of -.26 for notreceiving a card and -.21 for the lowest age category.

108 Ideally, party identification should have been includedin the analysis, but it is not available in the survey. Onthe positive side, Blais et al. demonstrate that politicalinterest and information about politics are more impor-tant as correlates (see Anatomy of a Liberal Victory).Even so, the measures on hand might seem to provideonly an approximation of the kind routinely employed.Instead of a question on political interest, there is oneon election interest — that is, how closely individualsfollowed the 2000 election: “very closely, somewhatclosely, not very closely or not at all closely.” The twoknowledge items are subjectively based and not objec-tively determined, which would have been preferable.Specifically, respondents were asked whether theyregarded themselves as “very knowledgeable, somewhatknowledgeable, not very knowledgeable or not at allknowledgeable” about the parties and their platformsand about the voting process (“knowing where and

were no longer statistically significant. Note that it isonly in connection with this testing of interactioneffects that the logistic analysis (see footnote 106)diverged from the OLS results: none of the coefficientsfor these six interaction terms achieved statistical sig-nificance, suggesting, as one reviewer put it, differ-ences linked to their functional forms.

112 The survey sampled 1,278 adult Canadians during theperiod February 16 to April 2, 2000; the main results,though not the ones referenced here, are presented inPaul Howe and David Northrup, “StrengtheningCanadian Democracy: The Views of Canadians,” PolicyMatters 1, no. 5 (July 2000).

113 Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs,Evidence, May 7, 2002, p. 13, at http://www.parl.gc.ca/InfoComDoc/37/1/HAFF/Meetings/Evidence/haffev63-e.htm#Int-227341

114 Modernizing the Electoral Process: Recommendationsfrom the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada Followingthe 37th General Election (Ottawa: Elections Canada,2001).

115 This was also the view of several speakers, mostnotably Graham White and John Courtney, at theIRPP-sponsored conference, “Transparency, Disclosureand Democracy.”

116 Courtney and Smith, “Registering Voters,” p. 433. Vote-encouraging activities may be especially important toensure that enhanced coverage does not simply lead tothe listing of unlikely voters who are relatively uninter-ested and uninformed. Indeed, without measures topromote participation itself, increased registration cov-erage may well lead to a lower official turnout rate.

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Studies Published / Études publiées

“Canada’s Democratic Malaise: Are the Media toBlame?”Richard Nadeau and Thierry GiassonChoices, February 2003

“Parliament’s Performance in the Budget Process: A Case Study”Peter DobellPolicy Matters, May 2002

“Generational Patterns in the Political Opinions andBehaviour of Canadians: Separating the Wheat from theChaff”Brenda O’NeillPolicy Matters, October 2001

“Parliamentary Secretaries: The Consequences ofConstant Rotation”Peter DobellPolicy Matters, September 2001

“Civic Literacy in Comparative Context: Why CanadiansShould Be Concerned”Henry MilnerPolicy Matters, July 2001

“Introducing Direct Democracy in Canada”Matthew Mendelsohn and Andrew ParkinChoices, June 2001

“Electoral Democracy in the Provinces” (addendum)Donald E. BlakeChoices, April 2001

“Electoral Democracy in the Provinces”Donald E. BlakeChoices, March 2001

choices“Changing the Canadian Electoral System”Louis MassicotteChoices, February 2001

“The National Register of Electors: Raising QuestionsAbout the New Approach to Voter Registration inCanada”Jerome H. BlackPolicy Matters, December 2000

“Reforming Parliamentary Practice: The Views of MPs”Peter DobellPolicy Matters, December 2000

“What Could Canadians Expect from a MinorityGovernment”Peter DobellPolicy Matters, November 2000

“Strengthening Canadian Democracy: The Views ofCanadians”Paul Howe and David NorthrupPolicy Matters, July 2000

“Changing Dynamics in Election Campaign Finance:Critical Issues in Canada and the United States”Jennifer Smith and Herman BakvisPolicy Matters, July 2000

“Canadian Elections at the Millennium”Richard JohnstonChoices, September 2000

Strengthening Canadian DemocracyRenforcer la démocratie canadienne

45

RésuméFrom Enumeration to the

National Register of Electors:An Account and an Evaluation

by Jerome H. Black

Dans un deuxième temps, l’auteur examine le lienentre le nouveau système d’inscription et le taux de par-ticipation au scrutin. Dans l’ensemble, son analyseindique que l’établissement d’une liste permanente a con-tribué à diminuer la participation générale en plus d’ac-centuer les écarts de participation entre les différentsgroupes sociaux. Ces effets négatifs sont particulièrementmanifestes lors de l’élection de 2000, le premier test véri-table du Registre national. En fait, les données qualita-tives et quantitatives convergent pour démontrer qu’ungrand nombre de Canadiens ont éprouvé des problèmesavec le processus d’inscription ce qui, en retour, a dimi-nué la probabilité qu’ils participent au scrutin. L’impact aété ressenti de façon plus importante du côté de ceux quin’ont pas reçu la carte personnalisée d’information del’électeur, ce qui a réduit de façon disproportionnée letaux de participation des citoyens plus jeunes et moinsfortunés. Les résultats suggèrent également que leprocessus d’inscription a augmenté l’asymétrie de partici-pation au-delà de ces aspects situationnels.

Dans sa conclusion, le professeur Black présente cer-taines des mesures qui seront mises en œuvre pouraccroître l’efficacité du Registre et recommande la tenuepériodique d’un recensement à l’échelle du pays.

L ’adoption, en 1996, du projet de loi C-63 a modifiéde façon substantielle le mode d’inscription desélecteurs au Canada en créant un Registre national

des électeurs : au lieu d’effectuer un recensement après lapublication du décret de convocation des électeurs, onutiliserait maintenant une liste permanente. Dans cetteétude, le professeur Jerome Black expose en détail lesforces et les circonstances qui ont mené à l’adoption decette réforme et évalue en quoi le nouveau système ainfluencé le taux de participation au scrutin.

Dans un premier temps, l’auteur définit et examine lesfacteurs qui ont donné lieu au changement. Parmi cesfacteurs, l’auteur relève une préoccupation accrue à l’en-droit des problèmes posés par le recensement, le désird’écourter les campagnes électorales, la perspective deréaliser des économies, la possibilité d’éliminer lechevauchement des activités d’inscription entre différentspaliers de gouvernement, le précédent établi à l’électionde 1993 alors que l’on avait utilisé les listes électoralescompilées pour le référendum de 1992, et l’effet desrecommandations de la Commission Lortie et du vérifica-teur général. Par ailleurs, l’analyse révèle le rôle cléd’Élections Canada, notamment celui du directeur généraldes élections, dans l’évolution de ce dossier. Le professeurBlack soutient qu’Élections Canada a exploité descirconstances favorables à la réforme électorale pour pré-coniser l’établissement d’une liste permanente, en mettantl’accent sur sa faisabilité technique et économique ainsique sur les avantages qui en découleraient. Qui plus est,Élections Canada a profité du fait qu’il était, à cettepériode, dans l’intérêt du gouvernement et dans celui desprincipaux partis d’opposition d’accueillir favorablementce changement.

From Enumeration to the National Register of Electors:An Account and an Evaluationby Jerome H. Black

46

Summary

At the time, however, limited attention was given tothe impact of the proposed shift on electoral participa-tion. This leads to the second objective of this paper, anexamination of the link between the new registrationregime and voter turnout. By and large, the analysis indi-cates that the permanent-list approach has contributed todiminishing voter turnout and has accentuated existingparticipation gaps across social groups. These negativeeffects are particularly evident in the 2000 election, thefirst full test of the National Register. Indeed, qualitativeand quantitative data converge to demonstrate that alarge number of Canadians ended up in less than idealregistration circumstances, which, in turn, decreased thelikelihood of their voting. The impact was greater forthose who did not receive a voter information card,which thus disproportionately constrained the electoralparticipation of younger and poorer citizens. The resultsalso suggest that the registration process increased partic-ipation inequality beyond these situational aspects.

In his conclusion, Professor Black notes some stepsthat are being planned to increase the register’s effective-ness, but adds the recommendation that nation-wide enu-meration be conducted periodically.

I n 1996, Bill C-63 — providing for the establishmentof a National Register of Electors — was passed, thuschanging Canada’s method of voter registration

from postwrit enumeration to a permanent-listapproach. Jerome Black’s analysis of the change in suchan integral component of the electoral process has twoobjectives: to provide a detailed account of the forcesand circumstances that led to the transformation of theregime, and to determine whether the new regime hashad an effect on voter turnout.

The first objective involves identifying and discussingthe factors that led to the changeover. These includedincreasing concern over problems with enumeration, thedesire for shorter election campaigns, the promise ofcost savings, the possibility of eliminating duplicate reg-istration efforts between different levels of government,the precedent set in the 1993 election with the reuse ofthe voters lists compiled for the 1992 referendum andthe impact of the Lortie Commission and the auditorgeneral’s recommendations. At the same time, the analy-sis underscores Elections Canada’s role, including that ofthe chief electoral officer, as a key and proactive elementin the process of change. Professor Black argues that theagency capitalized on circumstances favourable to elec-toral reform to advocate a permanent list, stressing itstechnical and economic feasibility as well as the benefitsit could confer, at a time when it was in both the gov-ernment’s and the main opposition parties’ interests toembrace change.

Summary