Arts and Social Sciences Journal

Voter Turnout and the Electoral Crisis

Abstract

Catus Brooks and Jocelyne Praud

The purpose of this article is to provide a current understanding of the Canadian electoral politics crisis of 2016. This study in Canadian party politics is justified by the 2008 Canadian federal election results, which was the lowest in Canadian history, only 58.8% of eligible Canadians voted. It is a primitive of an electoral democracy to have a healthy voter turnout, since voters tend to be the ones shaping policy. If the crisis at stake is ignored, then this is an indication that Canada’s electoral system is at risk, as the lesser the voter turnout, the lesser the political equality of a country. This research demonstrates that Canadian political parties and the provincial and federal government of Canada should institute publicly funded post-secondary education, proportional representation (PR), and other mechanisms to increase voter turnout. The methods used in this examination include categorical analyses, a comparative case study, media analyses, statistical analyses, and dialectic. The results of this essay underline the role of Canadian political parties in the electoral crisis, and suggest that there is opportunity for Canadian political parties to win positions of power by increasing equality, and thereby the voter turnout, in Canada