Missing voters
November 17, 2006

Despite steady population growth, ten thousand fewer people cast ballots this week compared with three years ago. All of the decline took place in the former city of Hamilton, and may be a result of major problems with voter registration by the provincial government. Even with the drop, urban voters remain heavily under-represented on the new city council.

While Hamilton’s population continues to climb, the number of registered voters has fallen by nearly 23,000 since 2003. Half of the drop took place in the downtown, with ward two losing 6772 people from the voter lists and ward three dropping 5110. Drops of over 2000 each also occurred in wards one and five. Indeed over 99.5 percent of the overall decrease in registered voters occurred in the former city of Hamilton.

The cut was reflected in fewer votes cast in every old city ward, although the dramatic reduction in registered voters in the two downtown wards meant that the percentage of them who cast ballots there actually appears to have gone up (up 4 percent in ward two and over 2 percent in ward three).

Voter turnout (as a percentage of registered voters) was highest at 43.44 percent in Dundas, one of the wards without an incumbent in the race. But in ward seven, where eight candidates vied for the seat vacated by Bill Kelly, turnout fell from 41 to 37 percent – a larger drop than in any other ward.

Two other suburban wards – Waterdown and Glanbrook – saw substantial increases in voters. There was also a slight increase in Ancaster, but voter numbers dropped sharply in both of the urban Stoney Creek wards. The number of people who were registered dropped in two of the suburban wards – Ancaster and Glanbrook – despite strong residential growth in both areas.

The numbers illustrate significant problems with the current system of determining who gets on the voter’s list – a responsibility of the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) who’s task has been made more difficult by other provincial agencies.

Prior to this election, Hamilton officials were informed that nearly 37,000 people on the preliminary voters list were “unconfirmed” because MPAC had not been able to determine if they were citizens. The city sent letters to each of them on August 30, but only was able to include about 10% in the list finalized at the end of September.

Other municipalities faced the same problems, with Toronto dropping 231,000 people from its voter list, and Brampton eliminating 35,000. Mississauga chose to leave 58,000 unconfirmed on their lists, but any who turned up were required to prove their citizenship before being allowed to vote.

Not being on the voters list meant not getting notice to vote or information about where to cast your ballot. The number of registered voters is also used to determine candidate spending limits.

Prior to 1985, a door-to-door enumeration was carried out prior to elections, but that system was abandoned to save money. MPAC now updates voter enumeration by referring to records of new property owners, and by asking the owners of apartment buildings with more than six units to provide lists of their current tenants. City of Guelph officials say only 68% of building owners actually did so.

Guelph councillor Maggie Laidlaw wrote to the Minister of Municipal Affairs in early November detailing the dramatic differences she was finding between the voters list and those actually eligible to cast ballots. In one two block area she found 7 correct names, 11 who had moved away, and 30 who weren’t on the list. The discrepancies included many adult children who had moved away, along with people who had been dead for several years.

The latter is not surprising because MPAC has not been able to check provincial death records for more than a decade because of privacy legislation introduced in the early 1990s.

Laidlaw is convinced the situation skews municipal democracy.

“If you are a property owner, you have a better chance of being automatically enumerated by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) and are more likely to receive a voter card from your municipality which will instruct you on where to cast your ballot,” she told Gerretsen. 

“When it comes to tenants, students, non-owner spouses and adult children, the enumeration process is completely hit and miss, more miss than hit in my estimation.  The outcome is that large segments of the population are disenfranchised.  This group is where you are most likely to find young people, new Canadians and residents with lower incomes and lower levels of formal education.  They need more support, reminders and encouragement to register to vote, not less.”

Her assessment is that tenants and lower income residents are most likely to be left of the voter list, and that seems to be borne out in Hamilton. The 2001 census shows tenants comprise slightly more than one third of the city’s households, but 87% of them are found in the former city of Hamilton – the area which saw nearly all the decline in registered voters.

A comparison of population differences between the old city and suburbs supports this analysis. It shows 32.5% of Hamilton’s population lived in the suburbs in 2001. Applying that percentage to the total number of registered voters gives us about 17,000 less than the actual number who were registered in suburban wards. Population has undoubtedly grown faster in the suburbs than the old city, but this is likely offset by the larger percentage of children of young families in the suburban areas.

In Laidlaw’s view the presence of the deceased on the MPAC lists, and many who have gone to university elsewhere, further confuses the picture.

“Is voter turnout for municipal elections really dropping as statistics indicate,” she asks, “or is the participation of real voters increasingly dwarfed by the constantly growing number of names which no longer belong on the list?”

Irrespective of the state of the voters list, it is clear that suburban residents in Hamilton continue to be given much more representation at city hall than those who live in the old city. While there are twice as many people living in the former city of Hamilton, they get to elect only 8 of the 15 councillors.

The disparity was imposed as part of the forced amalgamation of the suburbs six years ago, and remains one of the issues facing the incoming council. A suggestion last term by Sam Merulla that the city move to representation by population didn’t even get formally debated.

Detailed results for both the 2003 and 2006 elections are available on the city website.